


You Turn Into What You Are

by Distractivate



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: (It's just pretentious enough), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Return To Me (2000), But really it's soft, Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be Alright, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Kissing, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Patrick Interprets Contemporary Art, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:00:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21867139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Distractivate/pseuds/Distractivate
Summary: AU inspired by the movie "Return to Me"David and Patrick meet in Schitt's Creek under dramatically different circumstances. A twist of fate shapes their pasts, present, and future.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Patrick Brewer/Rachel, Stevie Budd & David Rose
Comments: 210
Kudos: 388
Collections: Schitt's Creek Open Fic Night 2.0





	1. the saddest memory is a kind of light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the tags. The tagged content warnings are in this first chapter and then it gets much lighter.
> 
> I have it on good authority from my fantastic beta [Pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smarty_Pants/pseuds/Pants), who has not seen the movie, that you do not need to have seen the movie to understand this story. 
> 
> While this story varies significantly from the movie in some ways, I have admittedly borrowed plot elements, bits of dialogue, and a selective-use approach to transplant medical science. From Daniel J. Levy I have borrowed plot elements, bits of dialogue, and a selective-use approach to grant funding timelines and sensical timelines in general.

It’s not a heart attack. Which is a relief until David reads the fine print under the results of the WebMD symptom checker. It’s a pulmonary embolism, which is _much_ worse. 

Every symptom fits. Shortness of breath? Check. Chest pain? Check. Pain in his back? Check… Although it’s impossible to say whether an arterial blockage or a decaying motel mattress is to blame for that one. But palpitations? Lightheadedness? Check and check. 

He should call 911. That’s what it says to do. Instead he calls Stevie. 

She doesn’t answer the phone so he is forced to deliver his diagnosis in person. “And basically I need you to take me to a hospital right now,” he concludes. 

Stevie has known him exactly long enough to have caught on to his dramatic tendencies, so she takes him to the nearest medical professional, a veterinarian named Ted who is sweet and gentle and, in hindsight, completely unqualified. Ted listens to his symptoms and listens to his heart and tells him he’s going to live. It’s a panic attack, which is not a real thing but it sounds better than pulmonary embolism so David chooses to trust him.

After everything he has been through in his adult life, David should know better than to trust anyone.

Three days later, Stevie has to call 911 for him while she holds him in her lap, his head bleeding from where it hit the curb when he fainted outside the cafe. 

There are tests. Bloodwork. He isn’t paying attention. He can’t pay attention. He doesn’t know how to pay attention. He has to force each breath in and out and still he feels like he barely gathers enough oxygen to stay alive for the next one. 

He opens his eyes again after a few hours. Surely it’s only been hours. His family crowds around his bed and they are all wearing different clothes than they were the day he fell so maybe it’s been more than a few hours. Days. Stevie grips his hand like he’s dying—is he dying? Everyone is talking and it seems like they are multiplying, like the room is filling up with Roses. Like it would if he were dying.

They are taking the air he needs to breathe and he tries to tell them. Before he can, something is beeping loudly until it turns over to a solid whine underscored by more alarms. Or perhaps it’s his mother wailing. He can’t tell before the room goes dark again.

**——————————**

“How many weddings do you have to attend in a calendar year before you can call yourself a professional wedding guest?” Rachel asks, hooking one of the dangly teardrop-shaped earrings through her earlobe. She fusses a little with her hair, which is tucked back into a ginger twist so people can appreciate the way her inky green dress shows off her narrow frame. 

Patrick should probably tell her she looks nice, but he is distracted by his left shoe. The laces are pulling uncomfortably over the top of his foot. So he mumbles, “I dunno,” and loosens the knot to start over.

“Seriously, though. This is the eighth wedding this year and it’s not even July.”

“We could always postpone our wedding if you think it’s too much this year,” Patrick says. He means it in jest but it comes out with a hopeful edge he’s not thrilled about. 

She flashes a grin over her shoulder and bites her lower lip and says, “Nice try, Brewer.” So he can’t help but smile back and wonder if each of these fragile moments can be strung together into a full life. 

Bonnie, their Siamese mix, hops onto Patrick’s lap and knocks her head into his cheek. She does this sometimes, like she has a knack for seeing when he needs to be reminded that he’s punching above his weight with Rachel. Before she turns back to the mirror, Rachel catches his eye again and winks conspiratorially at the cat, so now he’s sure Bonnie is in on it.

They drive forty minutes to a country estate that has been transformed with pale sky-colored taffeta and silk drapings and white linen tablecloths and floral arrangements the size of his cousin Mark’s seven-year-old, all arrayed under a thousand strings of twinkling garden lights. 

“Wow,” is all Rachel can muster as they take it in. As an aspiring professional wedding guest, Patrick has had a lot of opportunities to inventory the things he can’t give her for their wedding on his meager salary, but this particular affair is an especially brutal reminder.

“It’s fine, I just want the marriage. The wedding isn’t important,” she says, like she’s reading his mind. He wonders if she can tell he’s not really sure he can give her the marriage she wants either.

The shine of the venue is temporarily dulled by tiny hors d’oeuvres and pervy Uncle Doug taking advantage of the cut of Rachel’s dress to rest his hand against her exposed back. He’s scared off by some mustachioed guy named Ray whose irrepressible grin straightens just long enough for him to fix Doug with a glare. Adam, one of Patrick’s college roommates, takes Doug’s spot around the cocktail table and greets Ray with a more-than-casual kiss. Which is…unexpected. 

Ray seems like an acquired taste, but he introduces himself as a photographer-slash-travel agent-slash-realtor with a podcast and that’s all it takes for Patrick to acquire it. Patrick finds out they graduated from the same business management program and they talk over dinner about Professor Varma’s legendary group projects and for a while afterwards about other things. Ray is in the middle of explaining how he circumvented the online discount travel sites using some techniques that Patrick thinks are actually pretty ingenious when the Best Man interrupts with a, “Check-check-is-this-thing-on,” over the sound system, and that lands about as well as all of the jokes in his speech. 

The bride takes the microphone to give an emotional if rather tipsy profession of gratitude, and then concludes by asking Rachel to stand so the rest of the guests can applaud her. Patrick can see that no one—least of all Rachel—understands why she was chosen for the honor. She catches him laughing and her shoulders shake as she tries to hold in her own laughter under the scrutiny of the hundreds of eyes turned towards her. Her laugh escapes in a strangled snort which makes him laugh harder. 

“You owe me a dance for that.” She swats him as she sits down, but her glare is a mask. He can still see the smile in her eyes behind it. 

He stands up and offers his hand for the dance anyway because it’s Rachel, and when he proposed he offered to dance with her for the rest of her life if she wanted to. And apparently she does.

The band is made up of septuagenarians but they know their way around the classics. She’s the professional so he lets her lead as the frontman belts out Dean Martin. 

After twelve years with her, he’s learned a bit about how a dancer navigates a new routine. He’s adopted the same process for his life. He plots out the choreography and learns the steps so that when the time comes, he can sell the performance. 

Rachel tips her head back and sings along. “ _Hurry home, hurry home, won’t you please hurry home to my heart,_ ” bubbles up through her cabernet-loosened laughter. She is humming with love and pleasure and wine and he knows all the steps to this dance by heart. So he kisses her and pulls her close and sings the rest of the song softly into her ear.

**——————————**

“Okay, what book are we reading today?” Stevie asks, crisscrossing her legs in front of her in the vinyl-clad recliner next to his bed in the Cardiac Care Unit of Elmdale General Hospital. 

“I just finished one,” David says. 

“That wasn’t the question.”

He groans and throws his head back as much as the oxygen tubes will let him. “I don’t want to start another book, Stevie. I probably won’t get to finish another one and then you’ll be sad every time you see it.”

“You think reading all these other books with you hasn’t ruined them for me for life?” she asks. “At this rate, I won’t be able to walk into a library.” 

Her steady eyes tell David that she is absolutely prepared to be braver than he is today, and he hopes he’s right about there being nothing after death. It will really be so much worse if he has to miss her when he’s gone.

“Fine. Let’s start _Banshees on the Plane_.” Seeing the book Moira left on the table next to his bed on her last visit.

“Your mom already told us how that one ends, and the suspense is kind of the point of the whole plot.”

“I know,” he says. “This way it will be ruined for you no matter what.”

“David, it’s only been a year.”

“Fourteen months,” he says. Fourteen months of therapies and medications and stop-gap procedures that failed to slow the decline of his heart. He wants to be hopeful but he’s never been able to muster it. He doesn’t want to die. Not at all. But he doubts he deserves the heart of whoever would have to die so he can live. 

“Fourteen months then. I don’t do math,” she whispers, her smile cracking open in response to his.

“I need you to take care of them when I…” he doesn’t finish that thought for her sake. “Especially Alexis. Not forever, but—”

“I will,” she promises. “But I’ll be so mad at you about it, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“That’s fair.” He tries for an easy laugh but his throat is too thick for that. She reaches out for his hand, squeezing tight. 

“Want me to sit with you?”

She doesn’t wait for his nod to climb into the narrow bed, wedged between his body and the side rail, careful not to pinch his oxygen line. She reaches across him and opens the book.

He closes his eyes to savor the feel of her as she rests her head on his shoulder near the collar of his T-shirt, the soft sweep of her hair on his neck, the notes of lavender in her shampoo, the bony jut of her shoulder into his, and the low, dry sound of her voice as she begins to read. “There’s something off about her smile. He takes seat 13B and tries not to stare. It’s too wide. Too eager. Much too eager….”

**——————————**

After the wedding, Patrick opens the car door for Rachel, who kisses him with a sweep of tongue that stirs up a familiar unease deep in his stomach. He focuses on trying to calm it as he pulls out onto the road back to Cedar Grove. 

About twenty kilometers from home, his life begins to spin. It turns into a slideshow on one of those old carousel slide projectors, a deep unsettling black between each moment as they come unstrung. 

A blinding flash of headlights. 

_Whir-click_.

Rachel’s hand falling out of his as the paramedics push the stretcher down the silvery white corridor. 

_Whir-click._

A nurse restraining him as they wheel her through a set of doors where he can’t follow.

_Whir-click._

A doctor absently tapping her clipboard as she tells him there was nothing else they could do.

_Whir-click._

Paperwork and a bag with her dress and her heels. A smaller bag of her teardrop earrings and the ring with its small diamond that was all he could afford and her cell phone, their engagement photo lighting up the lock screen. 

_Whir-click._

Home again, collapsed against the front door, Bonnie staring at the streak of red on his crisp white shirt, sharp eyes condemning him. 

_Whir-click._

Rachel’s mother sobbing into his shoulder, the ribbing of her black wool dress scratchy under his fingers, and the way her voice breaks when she says, “She loved you so much, dear. We all do.” The squeeze of her fingers into his back that feels like, _so much more than you deserve_.

_Whir-click._

A pile of takeout containers on the counter next to half a bottle of whiskey and Bonnie, her tail flicking solemnly back and forth.

_Whir-click._

A phone that gradually quiets as people run out of things to say, except for six months later when, over the course of three days, he receives four emails, one voicemail, and five text messages from someone who he vaguely remembers from that fated summer evening named Ray Butani. 

**——————————**

David slows the bike and rests it up against the side of the town hall. The front door is propped open—it’s a hot day—and he can hear his mother’s erratic diction as she makes her pitch for allocating the district’s first ever Arts and Culture Grant. 

“Hey I could have given you a ride,” Stevie says through the open window as she parks her car crookedly and half-on the shallow curb.

“I know,” David says. In truth he prefers the bike now that Twyla taught him how to ride it. He doesn’t even care that the hot pink doesn't quite fit his aesthetic.

He and Stevie step into the vestibule to listen out of sight until Moira is done with her pitch. He knows his mother has strong feelings about audience members showing up after a performance has begun. And anyway she’s run him through her plan one too many times, so he knows her spiel.

“I’d like us all to close our eyes, and picture three- to five-hundred acres of carefully-manicured lawn, accessorized with sculptures from some of the world’s most significant cultural contributors…” 

She goes on to describe the artists they might recruit until finally, she reaches the reveal. “Council, I humbly present Rosewood!” David can hear the whoosh of the fabric through the air as she whips the cover off of the drawings he made for her. 

There’s a beat of stunned silence and then they all talk at once.

“I gotta take a picture of this for Gwen,” Bob says, all enthusiasm. 

“It’s just lovely, Moira,” Jocelyn says, and David can hear the “but.”

Ronnie says it for her. “But who would even come to this way out here? I wouldn’t go here and I live eight blocks away.”

“Uh yeah, I gotta say,” Roland starts, “you’re not gonna find a bigger Noguchi-head than me, but I think I speak for everyone here when I say, good luck on getting your mitts on a Von Schlegell.” 

The other council members laugh with him and David wonders if now is a good time to offer reinforcements. He’s going to give her another minute; she insisted on making the pitch on her own. The members of council are right, of course. David privately thinks this idea is ridiculous. But his family has done little else but care for him, directly or indirectly, since they were stranded here in Schitt’s Creek. The least he can do is make their crazy ideas happen.

“Moira, I just think we need to be a little more realistic about what we can pull off,” Jocelyn adds gently.

“Who’s to say what we can pull off?” Moira asks. “Just twelve-and-one-half short months ago, my dearest David was lying in a hospital bed knocking at death’s gruesome door. If he can survive an ordeal such as that—and with a new heart!—surely we can manage to reserve a small parcel for a carefully curated selection of sculpture and greenery.”

Stevie gasps next to him and David just shrugs with a shake of his head that says, _what can you do?_

“I guess no one can use past suffering to their advantage like Moira Rose,” Stevie mutters. His mother has been… a source of strength, really. Calm and practical, and even, when they thought the end was near, uncharacteristically tender. And still herself. Always herself. He’s sort of glad she never lost that.

Now she is railing against the lack of arts or culture—“A no doubt disqualifying technicality!”—in Ray’s Ham and Clam Bake idea, as if invoking family trauma was not playing dirty enough. But it seems to be working. David can feel the tone shift in the council’s replies.

“Do you think she needs you or can we go get lunch?” Stevie asks. 

“I think she’s fine,” he says.

They exit through the propped open door and David collects his bike, walking with it towards the café. There is a mailbox across the street from Café Tropical, a red cube poking out of the sidewalk about three blocks ahead.

“I think I might send the letter today,” David says.

“Finally,” she replies. “You’ve been carrying it around for months.”

“I know. I just don’t know if they’ll want to hear from me, you know? I’m alive because someone they love is dead, which is _very_ dark.”

“Very dark,” she pretends to agree. 

“It’s just… A thank you for a heart? It feels like…both not enough and too much.” 

“Maybe. But maybe they need to receive it as much as you need to send it.”

“Hmm,” is all he will say to that.

But the steady thump of his new heart accompanies him for the rest of the walk towards the café. So when they stop in front of the mailbox, he digs the letter from the pocket where he always keeps it and drops it in before he can second-guess. He didn’t sign it and there’s no return address. He’ll never see it again.

“So, Rosewood, huh?” Stevie asks after they sit down at their regular booth and Twyla distributes waters and menus. 

“Mmhmm,” David nods.

“Are you happy?” Stevie asks. For a split second, he forgets they were talking about the sculpture park, and his stomach drops when he realizes he has to lie to her. Because if they’re talking generally, he’s not sure he is. Happy. Not sure he should be. But now her dark chocolate eyes have caught him out, and maybe she did mean it generally. 

So he gives her the truth anyway, or as close as he can on a bright Tuesday afternoon. “After everything I put all of you through, I will be happy if you’re happy.” 

She looks down at the napkin on the table as she rearranges the flatware in order of ascending length, her mouth closing off whatever she thought about saying next. He examines the menu as though he hasn’t memorized it and lets her have one of her moments that neither of them talk about. That neither of them have words for anymore. 

“Did I tell you about the family that checked in yesterday?” It’s the signal that she’s ready and willing for a new topic, and David settles in, asking questions he doesn’t need the answers to so he doesn’t have to think any more about what it means, what it takes, for him to be happy.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Work and chapter themes from the poem [In the Park](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48109/in-the-park-56d22915aa936) by John Koethe.
> 
> There are several living artists referenced throughout this story. Any personal details about the artists mentioned as part of David’s backstory or Rosewood are entirely fictional. Where relevant to the story, I did incorporate the artist’s stated inspiration for their work or works.
> 
> The three artists mentioned in this chapter are pulled from the show, Season 4, Episode 9: [David Von Schlegell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_von_Schlegell), Isamu Noguchi, and Magdelena Abakanowicz


	2. the life I wanted and could never see

Patrick lets his foot off the gas as he passes the sign. Did that say…? It’s probably not worth trying to figure out. He shakes his head to clear the image from his mind and keeps driving.

Incestuous signage aside, it feels good to roll into a new town. The sun feels brighter as the farmlands give way to the compact community. He can just be Patrick here, whoever that is. No one here will know his tragedy unless he wants to tell them. The name is appropriate too. He’s been swept up in the current of grief without a paddle in sight since it happened. He’s out of energy to worry about where that current is taking him anymore.

It takes ten minutes in Ray’s chipper company to decide this rooming arrangement is not going to work. Between the highlights on the tour of Ray’s multi-disciplinary empire, Patrick manages to work in a request to look at apartments. Ray trips over himself to oblige, and Patrick takes the first one he shows him, a studio with a fireplace that sort of makes up for not having much else going for it.

He uses some of the life insurance money for the deposit and first month’s rent. Rachel’s parents were still listed as the beneficiaries, but they kept insisting that as her fiancé he should take some of it to start over. So eventually he did, because it seemed like they needed him to. And because he desperately needed to start over.

This probably isn’t what they intended, Patrick thinks, looking around the rose-wallpapered box with the brass bed and ceramic knick-knacks where he’ll stay until they install the door on the bathroom of his new place and give it a fresh coat of paint. Bonnie—who Ray was kind enough to welcome without qualifications much the same way he’d hired Patrick—perches next to a ceramic cat on the dresser, her whiskers twitching warily at this new development.

He brushes his teeth and digs his pajamas out of his suitcase and spends another twenty minutes talking to Ray in the hallway which convinces him that he was right about Ray being a really nice guy and also that he can’t live with him. He needs—or at least he’s grown used to—silence. He digs through his messenger bag for his book, and his fingers catch on the letter from the person who has Rachel’s heart.

Her parents forwarded it to him in case he wanted it. It had taken him a few days to open it, but he keeps it close now. It is unsigned. Patrick is haunted by headlights from the accident and regrets about Rachel, but reading the letter is like pausing all of that. He can be happy this person lived, even if he can’t find peace about why. His impression of the person who wrote it that they are vulnerable and brave and deeply, deeply good. Those are things Patrick wants to be, wanted to be _with_ Rachel, feels he owes it to her to find a way to be now. 

He has never been good at vulnerable. He tries hard to seem like he has his shit together, even when he doesn’t. So vulnerable is…not that. Not that at all. He’s not sure he’s good, either. He’s— Well he’s gay. So. Some days he is able to give himself a little grace for not figuring it out in time for Rachel to have a life with someone else. But most days he just thinks about how if he’d been able to explain to himself, to her, she would have been at that wedding with someone else. Someone who would have seen the oncoming car and swerved in the other direction and—anyway. He’s not sure at all about good. But brave. Brave is what brought him here. He’d read the letter and decided to call Ray back about his job offer. He’d left home, quit his job and moved…here. So that’s brave. Or maybe just crazy. But he has to believe he’s making progress on something, so he’s going with brave for now. 

He crawls into bed and Bonnie grudgingly joins him, curling up on the bottom corner opposite his feet. He turns off the lights and the darkness descends on him in this strange room in a stranger’s house. But lying in a bed that was never hers is the least alone he’s felt in months. 

**——————————**

David sits at his desk near the front window of the old general store and sketches another view of the sculpture garden incorporating the parking area his mother has now insisted is essential to accommodate the crowds of tourists who will no doubt be flocking to Rosewood. He’s been working on this project for two weeks already and to no one’s surprise, every aspect is proving more difficult than his mother anticipated. 

To make matters worse, Sebastien Raine had had the nerve to contact Moira for a “terrifying and important” collaboration of photographs. She’d rejected him outright, thankfully, but it had given her the idea that David could leverage his old network of artists and influencers to commission works at a reduced cost. So now he’s added that to the growing list of things he needs to do, and it’s looking like at this rate he might be the steward of Rosewood well into middle age.

It’s not a bad idea to call old contacts. He knows a lot of people in New York still, at least in theory. He doesn’t have many fond memories of them though. So he’s not sure he can do that part of it. Reach out to people who used him. Hurt him. And collect on whatever debt he may be owed.

Some days, David feels like having a new heart is sort of like wearing a new sweater. It’s new, sure, but it fits the second he puts it on. Other days, it feels more like wearing new skin. Like he doesn’t recognize the way he looks or feels or moves anymore. Like everything is different. 

The bell on the door rings and Ray Butani steps in, accompanied by a short, broad-shouldered guy in a beige button-up. Ray has popped in and out of the Roses’ lives uninvited since their first week in town, and he never stopped when David was sick, bringing by baked goods and homemade casseroles and medical journal articles about David’s condition and occasionally watching a baseball game with Johnny or letting Moira walk him through her wig collection in order to help her develop a more efficient storage system. Which is to say Ray is always a distraction, but no longer an unwelcome one.

He’s not particularly welcome today though. David is in a foul mood, which always makes him feel guilty. He’s not sure how much he's allowed to dislike any given moment in his second-chance life. Still, when David stands to greet the two of them, he feels his heart kick against his ribcage, and his hand flies to his chest to steady it. 

“David, are you okay?” Ray asks, rushing over to him.

“Yeah. Sorry. I’m good,” David says. And he means it. Whatever it was, it wasn’t bad. 

“Oh good. I was worried because of your condition—” 

“Yes, my _condition_ that people make appointments before they drop by,” David says, hoping Ray can see that he doesn’t really want the stranger accompanying him to hear about his heart transplant before he hears his name. “You just surprised me.”

“Sorry, yes, I know you are very busy with the project. Patrick is helping me expand my closet organization business into corporate markets and I thought this is someone David Rose should meet.”

“Hi. I’m Patrick,” the other man says, like he knows that Ray sometimes needs a little help staying on topic. 

“David,” he says with a quick nod, shaking Patrick’s outstretched hand. Patrick’s shirt is terrible, washing out his complexion. But his hand fits neatly into David’s, wide and warm and surprisingly soft. 

“Okay, well, I will leave you two to talk logistics,” Ray says clasping his hands to contain his excitement, and then he leaves with another ring of the bell on the door.

David shuffles a few papers around on the desk then looks back up at Patrick who looks away quickly, as though he’s been caught staring.

“I… Don’t think I understand what you are supposed to be helping me with,” David says. "I don't have my own company. Or closet."

“I’m not sure I know what I'm here for either,” Patrick says with a wry smile. Despite the smile, he looks… sad. It’s not obvious. But David had learned how sadness hides on all types of people when he was sick. So he sees it there underlying the set of his mouth and lurking in the depths of his eyes. Patrick looks away without elaborating on ways he might be helpful and instead starts to explore. 

“So this used to be a general store?” Patrick asks, examining the shelves that are still pushed together in the corner with price tags on the front edge. David has stocked the nearest one with supplies but the rest are empty.

“Yes. A fine establishment. Closed about a month ago. There was talk of replacing it with a Christmas World but apparently the head elves decided there was not sufficient appetite in town for an all-you-can-drink eggnog fountain.”

“That is shocking news,” Patrick says, and a quick grin splits open the sadness on his face. That grin rocks David back a bit; it feels like it splits open a part of him too. David has been split open before. He’s not sure he likes it. Now he’s not sure he _dislikes_ it either.

Patrick continues his circuit of the store. The fact that David can’t stop watching him despite that horrendous shirt and snippy attitude and straight leg denim should be a warning about the dangers of going too long without so much as a random. Patrick stops his self-guided tour in front of the table in the center where the drawings and mood boards are laid out.

“So…what do you do for Ray then?”

“Strategic planning. Business development. Government forms and applications. Feasibility studies. That kind of thing.”

“I don’t know what that means,” David says.

“Why don’t you tell me what all this is and I’ll see where I can help,” Patrick says, and David bristles a little at _all this_. 

“Um, well. It’s a sculpture park, but it’s also more than a sculpture park. But it’s also less than a sculpture park, if that makes sense?”

“It doesn’t,” Patrick says, crossing his arms and…smirking. That’s the only word for it. It’s also the best that terrible shirt has looked since he walked in, stretched over his shoulders and arms, almost the same color as his skin.

“I mean it’s…an environment. A cultural immersive experience.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Patrick half-whispers and apparently he’s an actor because he’s just parroted David’s vocal cadence right back to him. 

“Okay, well, this was all _very_ helpful,” David says. “But I think we’re good here.”

“I’ll leave you my card,” Patrick says, "in case you decide you need it." He slides one out of his wallet and sets it on David’s desk. His last name is Brewer and the card is the same color as his shirt. So at least it will be easy to remember it’s his.

“I think I'm good, but... thank you for this,” David says, picking it up and putting on top of a stack of to-dos.

“I guess I’ll see you around,” Patrick says. 

“I guess so,” David agrees. Once Patrick is out the door, he mutters, “So nice to meet you, too.”

**——————————**

The second time he encounters David Rose, Patrick expects to be a little more prepared for him. Except he’s not, because he walks up to the storefront, its warm glow seeping out into the fading light of evening, and sees David come out of the back hall thrashing, apparently alone, drumming the air with his hands and doing an intoxicating shimmy-slither-slide movement punctuated by hip-popping on the beat of a song that Patrick can barely hear.

And well he's seen David before. He has eyes and David is... Well it makes sense that this is working for him is all. Even though he’s not… It’s not like he’s going to ask David out or anything. He’s not in a dating place right now, and if he were, it’s not like David would want— Patrick is probably not the kind of person David is looking for. Assuming he’s even looking. Because David is probably not. Looking. Because fuck. Look at him.

Anyway.

David turns and sees him at the door and freezes, hands outstretched mid-dance, and he’s— Patrick needs to do something about this. Not _this_ this. He doesn’t need to do David. Well. What he needs is a shower probably. He used to watch Rachel dance, both at her performances and just around the house. Rachel in motion was beautiful. Graceful. David is not as smooth, but he’s mesmerizing. Patrick never felt like this when— 

Anyway. 

It’s not fair to her to make comparisons. It’s not her fault he was an idiot. Is an idiot.

“Can I come in?” he mouths, finally gathering himself enough to indicate the bolted door.

David looks chagrined as he pokes at his phone to turn the music off. But eventually he unlocks the door.

“Hi,” he says, and it sounds like, _what are you doing here?_

“Hi,” Patrick says, trying for friendly. He was kind of a jerk that morning; he’s not surprised David isn’t happy to see him. “Ray told me a little bit more about your project and that you might need some additional funding.”

“Oh,” David says. “Yeah. Is that part of the feasibility development strategy thing you do?”

“It is.” It’s close enough anyway. “Anyway I put together a list of grants. You can go through them and if you’re interested in trying for some, I could help with that.”

“Oh. Um. Sure,” David says, the line of his mouth slipping into a half-smile. David reaches for the folder in Patrick’s hand but he pulls it back out of reach. It's pretty hard not to try again immediately to achieve that flash of annoyance on David's face.

“I didn’t realize you were a dancer.” Patrick’s voice is light and his mouth is arced (and oh, this is what real smiling feels like, he’d forgotten) and he’s flirting. He’s flirting even though he specifically instructed himself not to. 

“Oh I’m— I’m not a dancer,” David says, eyes fluttering and bashful, and Patrick wonders what else he can say so that David makes that face and also why he’s even bothering to think about that when he’s not… He’s not doing this. David. This.

“I wouldn’t have guessed based on that performance,” Patrick says. David’s mouth quirks before he manages to school it back into an insulted expression.

“Okay, well, thanks for dropping by. I’ll take a look at this and let you know.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure,” Patrick says. 

“Or did you want to go over them together?” David asks. And no, Patrick really was just going to drop them off, but…

“Yeah. I mean I could,” he finds himself saying. “In case you have questions.”

“Okay,” David says. 

Patrick sits down next to David at the large table pushed up against the column in the center of the space and David turns a set of drawings ninety degrees so they have room to work. Their interaction earlier had been a mere taste of David Rose, Patrick realizes as David shows him the plans and talks him through the project. David is still adorably flustered from being caught dancing and also clearly brilliant. He’s the most gorgeously expressive person Patrick has ever met. The black of his wardrobe awakens the night in his eyes, shimmering and deep. The band of stripes down the center of his shirt twists with every gesture. Patrick is drawn in, done in, even more so when he looks up and sees David’s mouth quirked with a little bit of smugness at the way Patrick’s eyes have widened. 

Because this idea is…

“It’s inventive,” Patrick says. “And I like the name you came up with. Rosewood. It’s…”

“Pretentious,” David finishes. “When you meet my mother you’ll understand.”

“Just pretentious enough,” Patrick corrects softly. David’s eyes do that bashful flutter again and he smiles down at the pages in front of him. 

“Do you think this will work?” David asks. “I… I think I can call up some old art contacts in New York, but without the money to commission pieces, it’s just going to be a large, green patch of grass.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “Yeah. It will. I mean I think you’re right. I think the grant you have is not enough. Although I’d like to run a potential budget through my software. But I’ll take a look and let you know.”

And now he’s done here but he doesn’t want to leave.

“So are these works you have already commissioned?” Patrick asks, reaching for a mood board, which he only knows is a mood board because it says so in the top right corner.

“It’s more of a wish list,” David says, and he bites his lip so his grin is adorably lopsided.

“Is this an upside-down metal tree?” Patrick pushes.

“Yes. Roxy Paine.”

“And how much do we pay her to make us a metal tree?”

“ _He_ explores the collision of industry and nature, among other things,” David says, taking the mood board with a huff. His hand closing ever so briefly over Patrick’s, and the resulting jolt that courses through him takes effort to contain. “And the price is still being negotiated.”

“And this is just a metal rock,” Patrick says, holding up another photo, because he’s having fun now. It’s fun, pushing David and watching him root himself to his position. “Or… I mean it kind of looks like…” Poop. It looks like an alien life form took an extraterrestrial shit on a raised slab of concrete, if he’s being completely honest.

“That’s an award-winning sculpture by William Tucker and I think it’s now _very_ clear that I will be making the creative decisions. But um. If you can handle the…the fundraising...”

“I’m very comfortable with that,” Patrick agrees, pulling another mood board from the stack. He’s not even going to ask what makes a bunch of steel I-beams welded together a sculpture instead of, say, an abandoned construction project. Although it’s tempting because he is realizing that David is at his most gorgeous when he is outraged by someone else’s dissenting opinions.

“Okay, so… what do you need from me to get started?” David asks.

“For some of the grants I’ll need copies of the plans and a vision statement. I can help you with that. I’ll need some artist agreements when you have them. And I’ll probably have questions about that. The art.”

“I can see that,” David says, confident. And Patrick is filled with a sudden need to spend more time with him, to figure out what else David is confident about just to see the way his shoulders square and his hands settle and his mouth dances.

“Maybe we should set up a regular time. Like a morning meeting. We can check in. Answer questions.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“How about every day at nine o’clock?”

“Oh god,” David says. 

“Ten?”

“Ten thirty?” David raises, scrunching his face like he thinks he’s asking for a lot. And now Patrick really wants to make David comfortable asking for a lot from him.

“Okay, David,” Patrick says, standing up. It’s the first time he’s said his name, he thinks. It feels smooth on his tongue. Like milky dark beer, full of familiar notes he can't quite pin down on the first sip.

“Are you heading out soon?” Patrick asks, not sure what else he can come up with as an excuse to linger.

“No. I’m going to work a little more,” David says, and a shadow crosses his face. Patrick knows that shadow. He wishes he could be more like the sun sometimes, chasing shadows like that away for people like David. But he’s lost most of his shine these days. 

“Okay. Well I should go.”

“Should we start tomorrow then?” David calls after him.

“Um sure.” And because Patrick wants to taste his name on his tongue again, he adds, “Goodnight, David.”

“Goodnight, Patrick.”

**——————————**

As the project moves along, Patrick settles into a routine in town. He spends his mornings hiking in the nearby foothills. The activity helps his restless melancholy. From late morning to lunchtime he works with David on Rosewood, putting together grant applications and occasionally teasing David about contemporary art. David wears indignance like a bespoke suit, confident in its fit. He shares each of his opinions like a gift, and Patrick is getting greedy for them.

Most days, he or David runs across to the cafe to pick up lunch, and Patrick marvels at how enthusiastically David approaches a meal. 

Over lunch, they start to venture outside of the manicured grounds of Rosewood for their conversation topics. One day, rain pounding the windows outside, David quietly tells Patrick he’d had a health scare. A surgery. That he is recovered now, thankfully. Which is why Rosewood matters. Patrick learns a lot about David in these talks. A lot from what he says, even more from what he doesn’t say. What he doesn’t say is what happened exactly. And Patrick can tell it’s not something he is welcome to ask about. David also doesn’t have to say how much he loves his family, how clearly he would do anything for them. He doesn’t say it’s related to his illness, but Patrick can infer based on David’s frequent offhand comments about his life before Schitt’s Creek, that the illness upped the intensity.

Patrick doesn’t tell David about Rachel. He should, if he ever wants David to do half of the things to him that he’s been thinking about on his way up and down the mountain in the morning. But David is the first friend he’s made since it happened, the first person anywhere who doesn’t see everything he says and does through the lens of unbearable sympathy. Patrick wonders what David is getting from what he doesn’t say. Wonders if he senses it anyway. The tragedy. Wonders if David sees that Patrick wants him. Wants to know him. Wants to kiss him. Wants to fuck him. Really wants not to fuck this up. He wonders if David can see how terrified he is to say any of those things out loud. David strikes him as innately good, and Patrick isn’t sure he deserves that right now, assuming he could even have it.

After lunch with David, Patrick usually goes back to Ray’s to take care of the accounts he has there, doing whatever vaguely business-related tasks the townspeople arrive in need of. And occasionally, recently, he wanders back to the old general store to do more work on the grants before dinner. He has a key to the building now, but David seems to have picked up on the pattern and often arrives within thirty minutes of Patrick. It feels good, having a project like this. He hasn’t felt capable of planning for the future since Rachel died, but planning this, Rosewood, is like a warm-up. If he can plan the future of this place, maybe he go back to making plans for his life.

Today, David is already here, talking on the phone as he paces the length of the store and grazing his free hand along the wood countertop as he walks past.

“Mmhmm,” David says. “And what I remember is that I paid for bottle service for all of you so you could court that gallerist until she agreed to display your work, after which you gained several commissions for one of Singapore’s wealthiest electronics magnates totalling in the millions. So one of your lesser-known sculptures at cost doesn’t seem like that much to ask.”

David turns and sees Patrick and offers a shy wave, but he ducks into the back room to finish the call, too quiet for Patrick to hear.

When David returns from the back room he looks like he’s been rolled flat, despite his hair being remodeled to the clench of his fist, wild and sprouting in several directions that Patrick has never seen it go.

“You okay?” Patrick asks.

“Yeah,” David says, unconvincing.

“Are you calling up old contacts to get sculptures?”

David shrugs helplessly. “I figure the Rose Family made careers for enough artists, the least they can do is help me add a little culture to this hellhole where we’ve been banished.”

It sounds flippant, but David has to push it out through the wavering line of his mouth.

“David…” he starts. He wants to help, wants to say something reassuring, but he’s had so many platitudes flung at him over the last year he doesn’t even know what sounds genuine anymore.

“It’s not your problem. I’m in charge of the creative decisions, right?”

“That doesn’t mean you have to—” 

“It’s fine,” David cuts him off. He packs up his things, stuffing them in his bag, and mumbles goodbye. He’s practically halfway down the street before Patrick can think of anything to say in return.

**——————————**

David is having more fun working on Rosewood than he thought he would. It’s still probably a terrible idea, but he and Patrick have identified a few grants that he thinks are promising, so at least it feels doable now. Watching Patrick mutter and poke at projections and try to hold back his layman’s contemporary art commentary and drift off, head bobbing from his neck over the less interesting parts of the grant applications he’s working on, is one of the more entertaining parts of David’s life these days. 

David is privately starting to think of this part of his life as the Patrick period. Some of his favorite artists go through phases like this, where they fixate and focus on one aspect, one challenge, one question and draw or paint in that space until they’ve worked through it. David has periods too, although they rarely result in creative output. There was the Alexis period, when she was at her most erratic and he spent all of his time oscillating between dreading the ring of his phone and hoping for it. There was the gallery period in New York, full of friends of convenience and consequence. And the sick period which is mostly a fuzzy gray and scary nothingness. And briefly but potently, what he thought of for awhile as the last period, the end of him, that persisted well into his recovery. But the Patrick period is different. He painted and drew concepts for Rosewood, but ever since meeting Patrick he’s been drawing again, painting occasionally, recording and fixating on other parts of his life. And questioning. Because it’s pretty clear at this point that creative output is not the only thing he wants out of time with Patrick.

The question, David thinks, as he watches Patrick set up his laptop and settle in for the morning, is whether Patrick is even interested in him beyond the commitment he made to Rosewood. Right now, Patrick is the only person in town who doesn’t know that David is ticking along powered by someone else’s heart. And as grateful as he is for his second chance, he likes Patrick snarky and difficult. And he just seems like the kind of guy who would turn sympathetic and considerate and quiet if he knew David had been as good as dead. And frankly neither of those Patricks seems like the kind of person who would be into David, so he’ll stick with the snarky version as long as he can. It’s pretty common knowledge that the Roses don’t like to talk about what happened, about the eighteen months where they needed everyone just to breathe, so he’s hoping he has some time before someone mentions it and Patrick starts looking at him like he’s damaged goods.

“I’m sorry… Is that a shower cap?” Patrick asks from across the table, pulling David out of his thoughts.

“Oh, yeah. Alexis has lice.”

“And do you…have lice?”

“Ew! No! I’m just taking preventative measures.”

“Oh. Okay,” Patrick says, in that way he has that makes David think he’s saving whatever comment is brewing for later just to drop it on David when he leasts expects it. 

David is about to tell him what he can do with that loud, smug smirk on his face when his phone rings. He recognizes the number, one of many he’s called in humiliation over the last few weeks.

“Hi Kristian,” David says, digging deep. He considers going in the back but Patrick must see something on his face. He’s watching intently, fixing David in place.

“David Rose. Calling you back about your little project. I spoke to Beverly. She remembers meeting you at the Biennale and she was sympathetic to your request. I can offer you one of the early studies for _Alpha_ at cost.”

“Well that is good news,” David says, and Patrick leans his elbows on the table and raises his non-existent eyebrows. David feels like he’s on display, and strangely, it doesn’t bother him. In fact… “Quick clarification. If it’s a study for a commissioned work, hasn’t it already been paid for? I’m not clear on what you mean by ‘at cost.’”

Patrick grins and covers it with his hand, like he knows how much that full-on smile empties David’s brain.

There is a long pause on Kristian’s end of the call. 

“Yes of course. I should have specified. The work will have to be packed and crated and transported. The staffing time and shipping and installation costs as well as a small handling charge is what I’m referring to.”

David gestures wildly to Patrick, who somehow divines David needs a pen and paper, which he passes quickly.

“Okay. Do you have those costs on your end? I’d like to run them by my business manager.” 

Patrick’s eyebrows go into his hairline at that but he’s smiling with the corners of his mouth arced downward and his eyes look… David has to focus on the call.

He writes down a few numbers, makes an arrangement to follow up on the final figure and shipping details.

“Thank you for your call,” David says.

“My pleasure. Oh, and Ms. Pepper said to tell you she still wears her mask.” David smiles to himself at that. They're not all bad memories.

When he hangs up the phone, David passes the pad of paper over to Patrick.

“For your spreadsheet. Artist is Beverly Pepper.” Patrick looks at it and then back up at him, and he’s fond. That’s the only way to read those eyes. “What do you think?” David presses.

“It’s still a lot, but that was… The shower cap must be lucky.”

“Um no. That’s just a… coincidence.”

“Yeah it is. _You_ made that happen, David.” Patrick just shakes his head and looks back at the numbers on the paper and for the first time in David’s second chance at life, he feels like maybe he knows what he's doing here.

“I did,” David agrees, still shy. “But if the grants…”

“You keep doing that, and I’m gonna get the money,” Patrick says, deep and sure. 

“Oh,” David says, and it reverberates in his head. In his heart. _Oh._

**——————————**

Over the last year, Patrick has learned that being an almost-widower seems to cause people to boomerang back into his life. People he hadn’t spoken to in years, hadn’t had reason to speak to, called him or sent him cards, shared their memories of him. Of her. And ever so painfully, of them. Some of those people disappeared again just as quickly, but others… Others stuck around. Adam is one of the ones who stuck around. 

Of course he’s still dating Ray—or seeing him anyway. It’s a flexible arrangement apparently. In any case he’s not exactly here for Patrick. But still. Adam knew Patrick back then. Knew Rachel. Spent most of her last night talking with them. And he’s— Well he’s interested in men and so is Patrick. So. Sitting in Ray’s kitchen after Patrick stays to help clean up from poker night, Adam is the first person he tells that he’s gay.

“Imagine the fun we could have had in college if we’d both figured out sooner, huh?” Adam says. Patrick remembers as early risers they sometimes shared the mirror to brush their teeth, that Adam would make faces in the mirror around his toothbrush, that Patrick would attribute his reaction to the morning and not the man. He imagines knowing what he knows now, kissing him there up against the vanity, with Adam tasting like toothpaste and scraping with overnight stubble, a minty intrusion on his routine. Patrick feels the flush creep into his cheeks and Adam smiles.

“Anyway it wouldn’t have worked. We’re too much alike.”

“It could have been fun while it lasted,” Patrick says and blushes again. God, just admitting now how much fun it would have been then is a rush. He’s terrified of doing something about this knowledge but…it moves the needle a bit. Imagining what he missed. Imagining what he’s missing.

“So are you thinking about doing something about it?”

For a second Patrick thinks he means with him, and he panics. Because Adam is attractive, but he’s not… Anyway.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t really know where to start. I think there’s someone I want to— I haven’t dated anyone since it happened. I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“Ah,” Adam says. “Well listen. I have this friend… He kind of burned out on Grindr. And I think you guys could have fun. No pressure. Just to see if you’re ready. We could do like a double date if it would help.”

“Oh,” Patrick says. “Yeah. Okay.”

It’s not okay, Patrick reassesses the following Friday as he tries to turn David’s mood boards into a narrative description of the project. He’s going on his first date with a guy tonight. It’s a blind date, and a double date, and he’s just pieced together that it’s David’s birthday so he missed out on the perfect opportunity to actually…ask him out. Not that he would. But if he _were_ ready to do something. Like that. With David. Then this would have been a good opportunity.

“So you have any plans for tonight?” Patrick asks, just to ask. He starts to pack up his things while David answers.

“Apparently my family planned a birthday dinner,” he says. “And then Stevie threatened karaoke afterwards but I’m optimistic I can talk her out of it.”

“Sounds like fun,” Patrick says.

“You could come. It’s an Italian place in Elmdale. Um. If you wanted,” David says. He looks almost hopeful, and Patrick curses the universe for giving him plans on this night of all nights. But the plans are part of the plan, part of seeing if he can do this. With someone. Maybe some day with David. Maybe.

“Actually I have a date.”

“Oh,” David says, and for a minute he looks… disappointed?

“Yeah I’ve been hearing about how moderately edible the food is at the café, so I thought why not really take a risk and add a blind date to the mix.”

“Mmm,” David says, the corners of his mouth fighting upwards against the rest of it tucked into his teeth. “A _blind_ date.”

“Yeah. Uh. Anyway. Happy birthday.”

“Thanks,” David says, smiling shyly. 

Patrick decides to go home and change. He didn’t bring many clothes when he left, didn’t have many clothes to begin with, and what he did bring was mostly blue button-ups. Blue was Rachel’s favorite color, something they had in common, and he hasn’t been able to wear it since. Looking at the limited selection in his closet, he is going to have to start wearing blue again or buy some more clothes. For now he pulls on a gray polo and a pair of darker jeans. It’s the café so… it’s not exactly fine dining.

Unfortunately Ken, Patrick’s date, also shows up wearing a gray polo, slightly lighter than Patrick’s and with a dark gray collar, but also paired with a pair of dark jeans. Although most of Ken’s outfit looks like it was shrunk in the dryer. It strikes Patrick that this has never happened before, showing up for a date and wearing the exact same outfit as the person you’re dating. Which… that’s a lot, for some reason. That feels like a lot. For one thing, it means he’s dating someone who shops in the same part of the store as he does which is exhilarating. For another, he can’t imagine ever showing up for a date with David to find they are both wearing the same thing. Which is somehow equally exhilarating. 

“Hey,” Ken says, flashing a million-dollar smile when Adam introduces them. Ken takes a seat next to Patrick. He’s small, shorter than Patrick, but he smells like cinnamon and his dimples have dimples and his laughter settles feather-light over everything he says and he’s… This could be good. Maybe this will be good.

It’s not good. It’s terrible. Ray notices they are wearing copies of the same outfit and Ken does a thing where he laughs so hard he bangs the table. He bangs the fucking table. The flatware jumps and resettles with a metallic shiver and diners several tables over turn their heads. 

He wants some kind of specific sweetener for his coffee that the cafe doesn’t stock so he sends the coffee back. He doesn’t like his sandwich—that’s understandable considering the veggie sub is shockingly wet despite Ken ordering it without cheese or sauce or any other redeeming ingredients—and the whole restaurant hears about that too, along with more percussive smacking of the Formica.

The worst part is in between his assaults on the table, he also tells charming stories at an appropriate social volume. And he’s forward in a way that Patrick finds unsettling and thrilling all at once. Patrick can almost forgive the table pounding when he feels the weight of Ken’s hand strong and heavy on his thigh. Ken pauses mid-story about the community theater production he's stage managing to brush a crumb from the corner of Patrick’s mouth, offering a tantalizing smile that, frankly, is hard to reconcile with his inner little drummer boy. And Patrick thinks about kissing him at the end of the night. Maybe hooking up with him. Maybe give those hands something to—

He’s getting ahead of himself here.

As Ray tells a story about a particularly brutal Winnipeg winter, Patrick wonders if David would put his hand on his leg like this on a first date. And it’s pretty clear, suddenly, what he wants here. Patrick rests his hand over Ken’s to keep it from moving further up the inseam of his thigh. It’s probably sending the wrong signal—Patrick is not planning to call him or kiss him or anything else, he’s sure—but at least it will spare the table and the other diners from any more two-handed poundings. 

After dinner, Patrick knows he’s supposed to invite Ken over. Ken drove here from Elmdale with Adam, and Adam is staying at Ray’s. 

“Can I give you a ride home?” Patrick asks instead. 

“Oh. Did I—”

“I’m just really tired and I don’t think—”

“Hey, it’s fine,” Ken says.

“It’s not.” Patrick looks down at their feet and is both appalled by Ken’s shoes and pleased to see that in this area at least they don’t match.

“It is. You’re not going to like everyone you date.” Ken is matter-of-fact and Patrick almost wishes he wasn’t wearing those shoes because he is kind of sweet, if occasionally jarring.

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “Well at least let me drive you home so you don’t have to sleep in Ray’s guest bedroom. The door doesn’t lock and it’s a whole thing.”

“Yeah. Okay,” Ken says with one of his feather-light laughs. 

Even though he doesn’t have to, Ken makes easy conversation which helps pass the half-hour drive to his apartment.

As Patrick shifts the car into park, Ken makes one last staccato slap against his legs. “Well, that was a fun night.” 

“Yeah. I’m really glad you decided to come.” He is, actually. It feels good to get this out of the way, to have the date and have it go poorly and still feel good to be doing it. Dating.

“I'm glad you came too.” Before Patrick really realizes what’s happening Ken’s lips are on his. It’s so quick and casual that Patrick almost feels like he imagined it. He can’t imagine what his face must look like, shocked but…relieved maybe. Just a kiss with someone he liked enough to kiss, like he’s done a thousand times before. Ken smiles at him and bites his lip and smiles again. “Thanks for the ride.”

On the way back to Schitt’s Creek, Patrick feels his heart start to race, like it’s been held back all his life from beating the speed it wants to. He needs to call David.

**——————————**

David sits with Stevie in their usual booth at Café Tropical sharing mozzarella sticks after his birthday dinner—“Yes, Stevie, I’m still hungry”—when Patrick walks in, making a beeline for Twyla where she is drying plates and stacking them behind the counter. He’s almost frantic, and so focused on Twyla that he doesn’t notice them.

“And that’s when I decided to get his name tattooed on my back,” Stevie says.

“What?!” David asks, ripping his gaze from Patrick. 

“There you are.”

“Where? What?” David is still confused.

“I feel like ever since Twyla told you you-know-who was on a date with some guy here tonight you’ve only been paying half attention.” Stevie points her eyes in Patrick’s direction, as though the rest of her is being anywhere in the vicinity of subtle. 

“I knew he was on a date,” David says. 

“Hey, Patrick!” Stevie says, catching him before he turns to leave.

“Oh, hey,” Patrick says, smiling and waving as he walks over.

“Whatcha doing here? I thought you had a date,” Stevie says.

“What are you doing?” David hisses at her, _sotto voce_.

“Oh yeah. I left my phone here.”

“Date’s over already?” she prods.

“Yeah. He had these shoes that were, uh, pointy? But then sort of…” Patrick tries to outline the shape in the air for them.

“Squared off at the toe?” David asks.

“Yes!” Patrick says, like he’s relieved that someone else understands the sheer horror it must have been. He’s so cute, David thinks, and so much more opinionated than he thinks he is. And he dates men, apparently. Which didn’t change things right away when David heard about the terrible double date from Twyla, but maybe does now that Patrick is here. In front of him.

“You dodged a bullet there, then,” David says, and Patrick’s answering grin is quick and bright.

“I think so. I mean there were other factors. But… yeah.”

“Oh I told them all about it,” Twyla says, bringing an extra plate. 

“Did you?” Patrick asks, his voice an octave higher. 

“Anyway we were just about to head over to the office,” Stevie says with a bang on the table that makes Patrick wince and Twyla laugh. “David stashed a bottle of whiskey there.”

“Actually I think I stashed the bottle of whiskey,” Patrick says. “But if I can join you, I’ll share.”

Which is how they end up circling the chairs near the table at the front of the old store.

Stevie doesn’t sit down though; her eyes flick back and forth between them, each sitting with a freshly poured glass. She downs her drink in one long sip and nods. “Actually I think I’m going to go. I’m kind of tired.”

“Oh,” David says, eyeing her. 

“Yeah. But happy birthday,” she says, giving him an awkward one-armed hug. She pauses behind Patrick and makes an exaggerated pointing-into-thumbs up gesture that David has to fight not to react to. And then she’s gone and Patrick is sipping his whiskey and examining him over the rim, and it’s like Stevie has taken all pretense of this being a casual extension of his birthday celebration with her. 

“I wouldn’t have guessed you were so picky about shoes,” David says, because it seems safe. “Do you have strong opinions about my shoes?” David’s props one of his Rick Owens sneakers on the corner of Patrick’s chair so he can more easily inspect it.

Patrick inhales sharply but smiles, looking down under his eyelashes at the shoe. “It’s a nice round toe,” he says as he squeezes it.

“Hmm,” David says. Patrick leans forward in his chair, and David feels his heart squeeze too. 

“What about my shoes?” Patrick asks in a completely different voice, gravelly and slow. 

“Oh, I don’t think we should talk about your shoes,” David says. 

“No?”

“No.”

“What’s wrong with my shoes?”

“You wore mountaineering shoes on a date. Were you going for a hike?”

“You never know.” Patrick shrugs

“Is that something that happens on your dates?” David asks. “Surprise hiking?”

“You _never_ know,” Patrick repeats. 

“Terrifying.” Patrick looks up from David’s shoe, smile soft, his eyes almost the color of the whiskey in his glass but growing darker by the second. “Well the good news is, it sounds like I’m less picky about shoes than you are.”

David realizes what he’s said—or rather, he realizes how what he has just said must sound—and takes a sip to hide his face behind his glass.

But Patrick’s gaze is steady. He’s different tonight. A little more solid. A little more brave. A little more everything, and he was already a lot. 

“That is good news,” he agrees, his voice so soft now as he takes David’s glass out of his hands and sets it down next to his.

Patrick’s hand travels up David’s shoe, fingers tucking in between the laces and the tongue at his ankle, one of them going further until it finds skin under the cuff of David’s pants. 

“I want to be sorry your date went poorly, but…” David trails off as another of Patrick’s fingers works its way between his shoe and his sock.

“I’m not.” Patrick’s voice breaks and he looks down, his face sliding between four different expressions before he finds David’s eyes again. “I’m really not,” he says again, clear and strong this time. 

It’s the feel of his finger pressing tight against the bone of David’s ankle that finally does it. It’s not particularly sensitive or sensual and yet…it feels intimate. Invasive. And David wants to be invaded. Patrick’s breath falters as David leans in, but his eyes flick hungrily to David’s lips so he keeps going. Patrick surges forward to meet him, his hand pulling David closer by the shoe as his other one fumbles for David’s arm where it’s reaching for him.

It’s not particularly long or deep or even graceful. But when David sits back again, Patrick’s eyes are still closed. David wants to invade him too. At last Patrick’s eyes blink open slowly, the whiskey color in them replaced by a deep black. The very edge of Patrick’s tongue slides along his lower lip, like he just needs to linger in the taste. It’s David’s first kiss since the surgery, the first kiss of his new life. It feels like he’s been resuscitated. David can hear his pulse roaring in his ears, feel it pumping into his fingertips and his toes like the blood has only just started moving again. 

David has learned to read every hitch and flutter and pound of his heart as a bad omen. But this feels… different. Good. Like it’s working the way it is supposed to since the first time the surgeon sealed it inside his chest.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artists/works referenced in this chapter:
> 
> [Roxy Paine](http://roxypaine.com/about), Inversion (2008)
> 
> [William Tucker](https://www.danesecorey.com/exhibitions/william-tucker?view=slider#2), various works
> 
> [Beverly Pepper](http://www.beverlypepper.net/sculpture/painted-steel), Alpha (1973-75)


	3. gradually the moments quicken into life

There is a dead guy in room 4. And David feels like he can take on a lot of things for his family, but not… He’s just spent too much time there standing at the door of death. So he’s going to steer clear of the motel for the day. Which works out because Patrick usually works for a bit before their ten-thirty meeting, and maybe he can talk him into the back room to continue where they left off in the motel parking lot the night before. 

As expected, Patrick is already there when David arrives at the office. He’s using red rubber thimble things to shuffle through the papers on the corner of the table he’s adopted as his desk, but he looks up when David walks in and stands quickly. He has a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights smile though, too wide and caught frozen in place on his mouth after it disappears from his eyes. 

“Hi,” David says, approaching cautiously. It feels very much like he might spook, which is not exactly what he was expecting. It’s been years since David has had a morning after a first kiss that wasn’t also a first of a lot of things. He’s not sure how this is supposed to go.

“Hey.” Patrick’s smile softens a little as he gets closer, taking a step towards him and trading quick, distracted pecks on the cheek.

“So, someone’s been busy,” David says, eyeing the stack of papers in front of him, every few sheets alternating ninety degrees in one of his organizational systems that only makes sense if you have the accompanying spreadsheet. The rubber thimbles are not sexy at all and yet… It’s really quite upsetting how many things Patrick manages to make sexy by being ambivalent about their lack of appeal.

“Yeah, uh. I’ve been up since five. Could not sleep, just… thinking about stuff.” Patrick is recollating his piles. In the process, he notices the thimbles and peels them off.

David has seen this before, the buyer’s remorse the next day, but he wasn’t expecting it here. Still, he should know. He should ask… “Regrets?” 

Thankfully that pulls Patrick up short. “No! No. I’m just… Can we go for a walk? Get a coffee?”

“Sure…” David says, not entirely soothed because Patrick is still jumpy and stiff and looking at his papers more than David.

Patrick seems to sense that his mood is catching like a cold. He closes his eyes and presses his hands flat against the piles, breathing in through his nose as his shoulders relax with visible effort.

“It seems like you have regrets,” David says weakly. He’s torn between wanting to end this here before he gets any more invested and clinging to this as long as he can, even if it’s only ten more minutes. 

“No. I don’t.” Patrick says it sharply. He takes David’s face between his hands, his eyes honing in on David’s lips and his mouth following like a heat-seeking missile. His lips press softly and slightly open against David’s. 

David knows what regrets feel like. It’s not this. David’s hands fist into another pallid button-up, pressing into Patrick’s back to pull him closer, deeper. David’s tongue feels Patrick’s hum in his throat, as Patrick’s hand drops to David’s chest, tucking in between them. That hand feels like fire now, scorching hot against his rib cage.

David starts thinking about where they can go. He could slowly push them backwards into the room behind the old checkout counter. It’s basically empty now, just a fridge and a sink and a few chairs, but at least it’s private. 

But Patrick slows them. He stalls out, taking his fill of long thorough kisses across David’s jaw and down his neck, and maybe slow is the wrong word because David’s brain is spinning and his heart is pounding faster and faster and faster under Patrick’s touch. When his lips find David’s again they are swollen from David’s teeth and stubble. 

“I have no regrets,” he says as if there could be any doubt now, resting his forehead against David’s, their noses pressed into each other’s cheeks. “But I do need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay,” David says. “A walk then?”

“Yeah.” Patrick kisses him again and David has to step back to prevent a second one. 

“So here’s something fun,” David says as Patrick locks up. “What if I stayed at your place tonight?”

“Huh,” Patrick says.

“It’s just that there’s some things happening at the motel...”

“No I’m just— David, I was engaged,” Patrick says, as though he’s admitting to tax fraud.

“Oh,” David says, and he can feel what his face is doing so he tries to rearrange it into less of a shock-and-awe situation. “Okay, like…recently…or?” His voice is high and reedy and he hates how much he hates this.

“It’s been more than a year.”

“Oh,” David says, lower, calmer. “Okay…”

“She died.”

“Oh god. Um…”

“We met in high school. We were together on and off for twelve years.” Patrick looks like he’s just trying to push it out now. Mechanical.

“Twelve years?” David asks. As though that’s anywhere near the most important thing Patrick has just said. They’ve stopped now on the corner outside the store, and David pulls him over to the side of the building where he feels less exposed.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I just…I liked letting you decide who I was without that…I don’t know, coloring it.”

None of the rest of this really makes sense the way it’s feeding into his brain in fits and starts, but that last part does. It puts everything else in perspective.

“Thank you,” David says. “You didn’t have to tell me, but I’m glad you did.” 

“Well I think I did have to tell you,” Patrick says, walking towards the café again. “Because I might need to take this slower than a sleepover tonight. But you should know it’s not…I want to. Soon, I want to.”

David feels warmth lick up his belly. He’s been turned on before, been turned on by Patrick before, but this is different. Personal. He wants it too, more than he can say. But he’s realizing he’ll have to make some of his own confessions before they get too far. But that can wait until they’re done with slow.

“Okay. We will. Soon.”

Patrick gets a glazed look about him that’s new in the last twenty-four hours, like he’s buffering, and David gets a taste of what it might be like to blow all his main circuits at once. Soon. But for now, he should talk about this. About what she means to him. What does he even say?

David’s phone rings outside the café before he can ask a follow-up question. Patrick waves for him to take it. It’s another of his contacts, someone who he didn’t even bother calling until he secured the three works they already have commitments for. Patrick sees in his face it’s another ghost of galleries past and gives his arm a squeeze, nodding toward the café and mouthing that he will go place their order. 

David steels himself as someone’s assistant passes him through to Darien, a person who had always triggered his deepest insecurities. But he’s gotten better at this, at convincing himself whatever they used to say or think about him isn’t true, or doesn’t have to be. So when Darien outlines their proposal, David works down the price and requests a tighter timeframe. He’s passing on his email for follow-up on scheduling when Patrick comes back.

David normally hates how easy it is to read his face, but Patrick seems to always be able to tell when he’s closing a deal. And Patrick watching him close a deal is quickly becoming one of his favorite things. Patrick is smart and capable and he’s looking at David like a thing of wonder, like David has done something remarkable.

“Another one?” Patrick asks.

“Juliana Cerqueira Leite. She’s looking for more site-specific commissions so she offered to do one here for a reduced rate. She’s actually making the piece _for_ Rosewood.”

“That’s a big deal,” Patrick says. And David doesn’t even try to tuck away his smile because it is a big deal, and because Patrick has been listening and learning enough to understand that. Which might be a big deal too, a small voice suggests before David has a chance to cut it off.

“A big deal,” David nods.

“Well here: Caramel macchiato, skim, two sweeteners, and a sprinkle of cocoa powder,” Patrick says, handing it to him. David offers a shy thank you and resists asking how long Patrick has known his coffee order in case it’s just as long as David has known Patrick’s sandwich rotation.

“So which artist is this?”

“She uses her body to remove the clay from her works. It’s quite powerful to watch, actually.”

Patrick furrows his brow in a way that tells David that his face is giving away the flavor of the memory he has of her. 

“Anyway. Will you tell me something about her?” David asks.

“The artist?” Patrick asks, baffled.

“Your fiancée. One thing about her.”

He still looks baffled, but he must see that David means it because his face softens.

“She was a dancer. Rachel.” Patrick’s smile has softened with his face and he looks down at the the blocky text on the lid of his cup that says _CAUTION—CONTENTS HOT_ and chuckles. “She taught lessons and danced with this company in London, Ontario. I think it’s the happiest I ever saw her, dancing.”

David is about to ask a follow-up but his mother catches him as they get back to the store. 

“Hello! I hoped I’d see your lovely visage today, David,” she says. “Although I see you’ve chosen not to bestow your own mother with a beverage.”

“Well if I had known you were coming—”

“And hello, Pete—”

“Patrick,” David covers for her.

“Hello Mrs. Rose.” 

His mother is not subtle about needing a minute alone with David so Patrick takes the hint and starts packing his things into his bag. He dips into the back to grab his juice from the refrigerator and his mother makes her grand confession about painkillers.

Apparently Patrick overhears her talking about her accidental murder because he comes back out and compliments her voice and tells her she has nothing to worry about. And it’s almost a relief, seeing how smooth he is with her. He’s not quite that smooth with David, and that feels like a good sign too.

“Well thank God you’re here, Pat—”

“—trick,” David finishes for her. 

Patrick glows at that as he lifts his bag over his shoulder. Before he leaves, he squeezes David’s arm. 

“We’ll talk later. Thank you for asking about Rachel.”

“You’re welcome,” David says softly and watches him go. When he turns around again, his mother is looking at him like he’s one of the books from the small motel library she’s read a thousand times and just discovered has another chapter. 

“What?” David asks.

She tips her head as if to peer at him more effectively and offers one of her rare, vulnerable smiles before she puts her guard back up and pats his arm nearly in the same place that Patrick had squeezed it.

“Thank God you’re here, too, David,” she says with a shake of her head. Her heels click and clack along the floor as she leaves David to wonder what exactly she means by that.

**——————————**

Patrick is regretting slow. It’s been three days since their first kiss, and forty-six additional kisses, and still he’s counting down the seconds to 10:35 a.m. because really his day starts then, when David arrives, instead of at 7:00 a.m. when he wakes up. David had spent most of the Saturday after his birthday helping his family distract guests so the body in Room 4 could be removed. And yesterday, David’s family had arrived at their office and gathered around the central table one at a time until all four Roses were chattering, standing over the plans and talking about some completely unrelated thing. The Roses’ Sunday family dinner is a sacred thing—Moira and David are making enchiladas tonight apparently—so Patrick had decided to excuse himself with another soft goodbye and, “See you tomorrow.”

Patrick has learned the Roses do this. They have a mysterious magnetic pull toward each other, such that if one gets close enough to another one, they’re drawn in no matter where they might have been going. When two are together the pull is stronger, and you can bet the other two are fast approaching. Patrick wonders if this is why they never spent as much time together in their old life. If maybe they needed the distance to keep the pull from overwhelming their own individual impulses.

So he has a plan for today to at least make he and David a little harder to find. 

David arrives five minutes late for their meeting as usual with a soft, “Hi,” that makes Patrick’s knees threaten to buckle. Patrick wonders if that’s the voice he uses in bed, or if he’s loud, or both, or maybe if there’s something Patrick can do that will make it so he can’t speak at all. 

But for now he settles for his usual, “Hey,” and the kiss on the cheek and no. He needs more. He catches David before he pulls away, kissing him soundly, gratified by the little _mmm_ that escapes through his lips into Patrick’s mouth. 

“Good morning,” David says, eyes and smile blown wide. Patrick wants to feel the smile against his lips so he does, a quick, soft kiss through a matching curve. 

“You’re wearing blue,” he says. Patrick feels his cheeks flush and hides it with another kiss.

“Yeah.”

“Kind of a departure from your usual sand-and-stone color palette.”

“Yeah,” Patrick repeats, and this time David kisses him, warm and quick and soft and teasing.

“I like it.” David takes Patrick’s face in his hands and bites his grin between his teeth, probably feeling how hot Patrick’s cheeks are. “I like the way you look in blue.”

“Thank you,” Patrick says. And he wants to say more. To tell David about why he stopped wearing blue, about how it felt, reaching into his closet that morning and pulling one out without thinking, and realizing it didn’t hurt anymore to slide the buttons into the holes and see something of his old self in the mirror. But the words collide and jam in his throat. He considers making a self-deprecating joke the way David does, to convey something of the truth without letting the pain show, but that’s not his style either.

“Do you have any questions for our meeting?” Patrick asks instead, backing up enough to see David’s face without dropping his hand from the top of his hip, thumb tracing one of the swirls in the pattern of his sweater. 

“Nothing urgent,” David answers, his own hands dropping from Patrick’s cheeks to his shoulders, heavy and comfortable.

“Would you come look at something with me?” Patrick asks. 

“Okay,” David says, biting his lip.

“Okay,” Patrick says, pressing another soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Let’s go.” 

Patrick hoists up the backpack of supplies he brought with him and leads the way past the café, across the street, and down the road about a half block past a stand of pine trees until he turns onto a dusty path that dead ends in a large field. 

“What is this?” David asks. The prairie grasses and wildflowers spring up around them, almost waist height except where Roland mowed part of the path Patrick had requested.

“This is Rosewood, if you want.”

“But we have a site,” David says.

“Yeah. It’s two kilometers outside of town limits and you’re paying market rate for the land.”

“And what are we paying for this?”

“David, you own this.”

“What?”

“Yeah. You own the town, and this is part of the town. I talked to Ray about it yesterday and he let me look over the deed and sales agreement. It’s admittedly pretty weird how everything is structured, but since there are no occupants on this plot, the field is yours already. The wooded area in that direction too. And if anyone does come to Rosewood, they are a lot more likely to visit the café or the other downtown businesses if this is here. Otherwise it’s just a drive-by attraction.”

“Attraction seems like a very generous word for this project of ours,” David says. Patrick tries not to get lost in _ours_.

“The location is unorthodox maybe,” Patrick says, “but I think the attraction is there.”

David’s eyes catch his—a mixture of shy and knowing—and then move on, scanning the open field. Patrick feels like he has to keep talking because David’s face is doing gymnastics as he takes it in.

“I know it would take some rearranging of your plan. The main road approach is over there, so the parking lot would have to move. The wildflowers bloom all summer so we could save on landscaping if we retained and managed those in some areas. The other site was a lot bigger, but it didn’t have the woods. We have the budget to clear out the underbrush but we’d have to keep most of the trees and work around them. Still, that could be neat, maybe.”

David is still nodding and looking around and not saying anything and Patrick is getting nervous.

“I’m sorry if I overstepped. I know you’re in charge of creative decisions. We can still make an offer on the other lot, it’s just… I don’t mean to, uh, mess with your vision or—”

“This will work,” David says, nodding. He quirks a smile at Patrick and then makes a circle in the opposite direction, just in case moving counter-clockwise unwinds his approval. It doesn't.

“And I’m so glad you found it, Patrick, because you’ve managed to solve most of our funding problems in one simple, yet elegant, solution.”

“Hmm, a bold claim,” David says with a righteous nod. 

“Is it though?” Patrick teases.

“So what’s in the bag?” David asks.

“Oh, I uh, brought a picnic? I was thinking it might be nice to have you to myself for a bit. We haven’t really had a lot of time since we, uh…”

“We haven’t,” David says, his smile bright. “I’ve, um, never really dated someone with my family around. Everyone is working on balance.”

“They seem nice,” Patrick says.

“They are not,” David says, but his smile at the thought of his family is different, open and uncomplicated, and Patrick sees the truth.

“Good then,” Patrick says.

“Yeah,” David nods. “We didn’t used to be but…I think so.”

David helps Patrick set up the picnic and the conversation flows as easily as the wine. Patrick learns more about David, even though it feels a bit like he has to tug on the stories until they break free of David’s hold. Now that he's not holding back with David, he also learns more about himself, about the way his pulse quickens with their banter. Rachel was the only person who could keep up with him. He’s missed this. And yet it's not quite the same. It's a little easier, and he's a lot harder.

When the food is gone, David leans over to kiss him, chaste and easy. 

“This place _is_ a simple, yet elegant, solution,” he says. “Thank you.”

Patrick can only nod, undone by David’s rare flash of unclouded sincerity. 

“Hey. You okay?” David asks.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

David doesn’t push but Patrick still feels the uncertainty, the lingering question in the back of his eyes that has been there since he asked about regrets. 

He wants to be smoother, better, but he doesn’t know how to plan things out anymore. He's halfway through his plan for today and he's lost. He feels like most of his days are spent warring between impulse and reason, frustrated that they don’t align like they used to. He doesn’t want to catch David in the battle, but he’s losing there too. He wants David more than he’s wanted anything, enough to tip the scale on the regrets he does have, about Rachel and not understanding he was gay, or at least not understanding quickly enough to figure out what he wanted. “I can’t stop wanting you,” Patrick blurts.

David’s head swivels at that, his smile transforming into something not yet seen, unbridled and uncomplicated and all-knowing. 

“Good,” is all he says though, and Patrick’s face is burning and his hands are sweating and he can’t stop talking now that he’s started.

“I want to move faster, but I feel like I don’t know how. I don’t know where I’m supposed to touch you or what I’m supposed to do.”

“Okay,” David says. He stacks up the remnants from the picnic and relocates them to the opposite corner of the blanket, then lies down stretched out on the blanket with his head propped up on his hand. He looks like dessert, sweet and decorative and fucking mouthwatering. It’s not helping Patrick keep his wits about him. “C’mere.”

Patrick comes, stretching out beside him, facing him; he can’t take his eyes off of him. David leans over and kisses him, calms him.

“Where do you like to be touched, Patrick? Show me.”

“I…I don’t know.” Patrick can remember a few things that he liked, things he and Rachel had done over and over because they usually worked. But he can’t imagine them here. With David. He wants, he hopes, there are new things he likes with David. More things. “Can you show me what _you_ like?”

David’s smile quivers but he nods. “Boundaries?” he asks, his hand cupping the outside slope of Patrick’s hip, squeezing reassurance.

“No.” Patrick says it firmly enough that David’s eyes widen.

“Okay. If you change your mind…”

“I’ll tell you.” 

David kisses him long and slow, and this feels different, like he’s origami, a flat piece of paper being carefully, precisely folded until he's transformed, taking on unimaginable dimension. 

“What about you?” Patrick asks between kisses. “Boundaries?”

David looks startled for a moment at that question, but he considers it thoughtfully. 

“Clothes on. Is that okay?” he asks, and Patrick hates every person who has ever told him he has to ask if it’s okay to want something. 

“Of course it’s okay.”

“I…I don’t trust Roland not to wander on to my land.”

Patrick smiles and decides not to make a joke, and then he pulls David in again. “Okay,” he whispers against his lips.

David takes his hand, pressing a kiss to his wrist and placing it on his chest. Patrick can feel the nub of David’s nipple under his thumb. 

“Do what I do. I’ll show you what I like,” he says. 

David presses his hand, palm flat, against Patrick’s chest. It’s a little awkward at first with their arms crossing between them, but David’s eyes stay soft and open as he strokes slowly over Patrick’s nipple and it’s, fuck, it’s so hot and so different and Patrick has to try not to push into David’s hand. 

“If you do what I'm doing, it will feel so good,” David murmurs, which is when Patrick realizes he hasn’t been following along.

“Yeah. I want to.” 

And then he starts to move like David. Patrick doesn’t think he’s had this much eye contact during sex in his life and…well. They’re not even having sex. They're fully dressed. But Patrick feels like he’s being undressed and fucked by David’s eyes. There are birds chirping in the nearby stand of trees and a breeze whispering across his skin and the distant rumble of someone’s tractor and Patrick feels like all of that falls away as the world zeroes in on this moment, his senses sharp and focused on David. 

Patrick follows David’s lead, his hand traveling up David’s arm and over his shoulder and along his neck and back down and back up, cupping and stroking, and Patrick keeps thinking this should make him feel awkward or strange, but the solid warmth of David under his hand is grounding. It begins to feel meditative, the fuzz of his sweater under Patrick’s hand, the slow movement, the deep dark pool of his eyes, the exact same motion and pressure and weight of David’s hand on his body as he’s giving to David.

”Your hands are so good, Patrick,” David says, low and breathy, nosing closer. “I want them all over me like this. I can’t wait to see how good you are.”

”Your hands are—mmm.” Patrick’s words are cut off when David finally kisses him again. Patrick doesn’t have to pay attention to David’s movements anymore to mirror him. It’s like they’ve merged despite the space between them. They pull together in unison, the blanket bunching up underneath, neither of them caring as they get lost in each other. 

Soon, David’s hands are everywhere and Patrick can’t keep up. David has rolled so he is on top of Patrick and he’s not concerned with what to do anymore because David has lost track of the game too. His tongue and his hands are invading Patrick now the way his eyes had, deep and seeking. 

Patrick is starting to think he could do this all day when David presses his hips against him and that’s not— Obviously he’s done that before but— Fuck, David does it again as he holds Patrick in place with his lip between his teeth and Patrick cannot possibly be about to come from a slow drag of David’s hips through multiple layers of clothing. The weight of him, the width of him, it’s too much.

“Are you still showing me what you like?” Patrick asks, grasping for something terrible that his brain can cling to and there it is, falling out of his treehouse and spraining his ankle, and David grinds down into him again and there is nothing like this feeling. Nothing he’s ever done has been like this and he's been doing this for years.

“I am,” David says, dropping his hips halfway down this time and stopping and that’s horrible and even better. 

“Okay,” Patrick says, because he can continue the game for self-preservation if nothing else.

He flips them—not very gracefully but the laughter helps buy him some time. Once he frees his limbs from under David’s back enough to get some control, he does what he thinks David did, bending his arms to drop his hips.

“You’ll get there,” David says when Patrick can’t keep going without coming. 

“God, David,” Patrick says, dropping his head to David’s chest. “Fuck.”

“When do you have to get back to Ray’s,” David asks. 

“I don’t have any appointments today,” Patrick says. 

“Oh,” David grins. “Well we could go back to your place if you want to do something about this.” David cups his hand lightly around the zipper on Patrick’s Levis and Patrick drops down into David’s hand like it belongs there. 

“I think— Soon. God,” Patrick gasps as David’s hand presses against his aching cock. “Tomorrow? Can we do that tomorrow?”

“Do you have appointments tomorrow?” David asks, rubbing his hand in a slow circle.

“Yeah. Fuck. Wednesday?” 

“This is very hot, you working me into your afternoon appointments, but how about I take you on a date instead. Tomorrow or Wednesday night?”

Patrick drops down, pinning David’s hand between them, and smiles into his neck before he kisses it. 

“I’d like that.”

“Me too,” David says. And since Patrick’s afternoon is clear, David takes the opportunity to show Patrick a few more things he likes. 

**——————————**

“And then we just…stayed there until it got dark,” David finishes, cutting out a few of the more personal details from his afternoon with Patrick the day before.

“And this is a problem?” Stevie asks, taking another pull of her beer at their corner booth in the Wobbly Elm.

“Yes! Because now we have a date and he’s going to see the ten-inch scar on my chest and ask about it and I’ll tell him and then he won’t look at me the same way ever again.”

“Do you really think your health is his favorite thing about you?” Stevie asks. “Because he’s seen you eat right? He can’t be totally blindsided to find out you’re not Gordie Howe.”

“Who? Nevermind. I’ve been doing squats and push-ups since we started seeing each other, thank you very much,” David says.

“So…four days? Three?”

“ _Four._ And I’m very sore, in case you’re wondering.”

“From the squats or from—”

“The squats obviously. God.” David glares at her and she doesn’t even have the decency to look sheepish. 

She grins around her beer bottle and takes another quick glance for potential randoms before focusing on him again. 

“Okay,” she says. “You know how much I dislike approving of your life choices, so you know I mean it when I say that I like this for you. And I think if you tell him what happened, you’ll have to put up with at most an hour or two of tenderness and annoying questions before he’s back to giving you shit. He has way too much fun giving you shit to stop now.”

“I think I need a new best friend,” David grouses.

“And also,” she says, and uh-oh, he can tell she’s about to get serious. “I love you, and it’s really good to see you doing something that makes you happy for a change.”

“I haven’t done anything yet,” David says, although he grins against the rim of his glass. “But I love you, too.”

“Okay. Now that that’s settled, let’s do the thing where I prove I have no more sympathy for you and your heart situation by crushing you at pool.”

“Okay, but I get to break,” David says. 

“Nope. No sympathy, Rose.”

David takes a last sip of his drink with a wide smile and turns to help her rack up the balls.

**——————————**

Patrick isn’t prepared for what David looks like when he opens the door at his knock. He’s wearing a black sweater that fits to his frame, white pants fitted likewise, and he’s carrying a bouquet of flowers, their delicate whites and light greens contrasting with the black.

“You look very nice,” David says, handing over the flowers. “These are for you.”

Patrick feels like he might cry, which is not really how he wants to start his first official date with David. It feels good to be asked out and picked up—he’s already a little emotional about that. But this… People have given him flowers before. Enough to open his own florist after the funeral. But not like this, not to woo him.

He looks at the flowers and blinks back tears and kisses David once with, “Hello,” and again with, “Thank you,” and a third time without words, overwhelmed by all the things David is helping him claim for himself.

He would keep kissing him too, but David leaps back with a, “What the fuck!” and Bonnie answers with a startled _meow_. “You have a cat?”

“Uh…”

“I feel like I would have known if you had a cat. I did not imagine you with a cat,” David says, tucking his hands into his chest in a pose that looks startlingly like Alexis so he can keep an eye on Bonnie. She is currently doing figure-eights around his legs and he’s trying so hard to look like it’s not the worst thing that has ever happened to him and Patrick thinks about kissing him again. So he does. 

“Um yeah. Well it was hers. And then ours. And then I guess— Yeah, I have a cat.”

“And does she always do this, um, velcro routine?”

“No, actually,” Patrick says. “She doesn’t like strangers. She wouldn’t let Ray touch her until the day I moved out. You should be flattered.”

“Flattered?” David says, face scrunched. “Are we sure that’s the right word in this…situation, or…?"

“You’ll get used to her,” Patrick says.

“And how do we, um…does she stay…around? I mean if we are…” David starts scanning the apartment and must notice the lack of additional rooms in which to shut a cat.

“Are you already angling to get invited back up here tonight, David?” Patrick asks.

David’s whole face has to fight his smile. 

“No. Not necessarily. I just mean, eventually, when we’re doing…that.”

“Oh. And if I do still want to? Tonight?”

His face loses the battle, his mouth spreading wide, his dimples diving deep.

“Then we will need to devote a smidgen of time first to discuss some logistics about the cat.”

“Bonnie.”

“Who?”

“The cat is named Bonnie. And we can talk logistics over dinner, because I think once we get back here, I won’t want to do a lot of talking.”

“Oh,” David says, blinking slowly. 

“Should we go?” Patrick asks.

“Mmhmm,” David says. 

They do discuss the cat over dinner, and Patrick’s old job, and a few stories from his galleries that are coming loose with less shaking now that David's efforts to acquire art pieces are helping him be more comfortable around those memories. 

Unlike Patrick’s last first date with a man, David drinks and eats without complaints, which is admittedly a little easier at this restaurant in Elm Grove than at Café Tropical. And his hands, while gorgeously active across the table, manage to avoid expressing emotions by pounding the solid oak surface. When they leave the restaurant they walk for a bit along the bike path that runs next to the river. Patrick thinks about taking David’s hand, about walking along a path hand-in-hand with someone he’s— Someone he’s falling in love with, probably. 

And then he is holding David’s hand. Maybe he reached for it without thinking, or David did, or they are still in some version of the mirror game they started in the field, still moving as one. David’s hand is big, enveloping and warm, skin smooth and whisper-soft where it presses against Patrick’s, and Patrick wonders if that’s what David’s body will feel like too, wrapped around him in his bed.

“So, Mr. Brewer,” David says, and Patrick likes that. He forgets to stop the small noise in his throat it’s so good, and David grins. “What’s one thing I would be surprised to find out about you?”

“I think you kind of know the main thing,” Patrick says.

“No other big secrets? I’m not going to find Tragically Hip lyrics tattooed on you somewhere?”

“No, actually I did the thing where I just got ‘Tragically’ tattooed over my hip, so it’s like a test. If he gets the joke he gets to spend the night.” Patrick loves how easy the pronouns flow.

“Hot,” David says. 

“I do have a tattoo though,” Patrick says. 

“I would…not have guessed that,” David admits, his twisted smile making Patrick want to surprise him all the time with gestures and songs and kisses in the staff room and whatever else he can think of. “Okay so you can’t just land that on me… what’s the story?”

“Uh. Rachel loved birds. She said they were like dancers, that their movement is by its nature reactive. Anyway she had notecards with these three birds in the corner. She used to leave notes for me, and for her sister and her friends. After she was gone we went and got tattoos together. I don’t know, I guess there’s a reason they tell you not to make big decisions for a year. Not that it was a big decision. Anyway I’m glad I have it now.” He hadn’t always been. There were months where it felt like a brand, where seeing it in the mirror made him feel like a traitor.

“So where is it?” David asks. 

He’s going to say it’s on his shoulder, but instead he says, “I guess you’ll have to find it.” Which is maybe too much of a tease—it’s not like David will have to mount a search party—but David makes a gratifyingly strangled laugh so maybe it was the right choice.

“What about you?” Patrick asks. “Have any hairy moles or animal-shaped birthmarks I should be looking for?”

“Ew, no. But um…I do have a scar,” he says carefully.

“Will I have to go looking for it?” Patrick asks.

“Um, no. No, it’s pretty obvious. I had a surgery. Heart surgery. It’s not…I’m fine now. Really. I’m just saying that… I don’t want you to be careful with me.”

“Hey,” Patrick says, pulling them up short. “I want to be careful with you David. But I promise, it won’t be because of that.”

“Okay,” he says, his voice nearly a whisper.

“Does it still affect you? Like are there things you can’t do, or…?”

“I probably won’t be climbing Everest or anything, but generally no. I have a medication I take that makes my hands and feet cold all the time, and every once in awhile I get to visit my cardiologist for tests, but that’s about it.”

“Is the hands and feet thing why you always wear sweaters?” Patrick asks.

David grins and nods. “The knits help. I used to wear fitted clothes and short sleeves more often. But I get cold in them now, even in the summer.”

“Oh,” Patrick says. “But you’re…okay?”

“Never better,” David says with more conviction than Patrick has ever heard from him, which is saying a lot considering David seems to live in a constant state of certainty. He’s going to ask a follow-up but David changes the subject.

“What will you do once the grants are done for Rosewood?”

“I don’t know I guess. I wasn’t really sure how long I would be here, but…I like it. The town. It’s nice. And people are nice. And working for Ray is okay.”

“But working for Ray is not what you want to do forever?”

“Uh, no,” Patrick says. “Honestly doing anything for longer than a few months is a concept I’m only just starting to think about again.”

“Mmm,” David says, and Patrick wishes he had prepared a better answer. This makes it sound like he’s making choices. He’s not. He’s floating on the current and now he’s trying to grab hold of the bank and pull himself out. He’s found something—someone—he wants to hold on to.

“Should we go back?” Patrick asks. “Since we have the cat logistics worked out.” 

“Yes,” David says, squeezing his hand. “Let’s go back.”

**——————————**

When they get back upstairs, Patrick narrates as he works, which is how David knows he is refilling Bonnie’s food and mixing in a few of the treats she likes and relocating her bed and scratching post to the kitchen. He tells her in no uncertain terms that she is to stay there. David has encountered enough cats to be dubious of the success of this performance and sure enough, Bonnie hops up on his lap on the couch instead of following the direction of Patrick’s finger towards her relocated domain. 

“Maybe if you just let her check you out a bit?” Patrick says, hanging his jacket up in the closet with a befuddled look. “I don’t get it. She never does this.”

“It’s fine,” David says. It’s not that bad, really. The cat is purring, a rumbly crescendo that seems to be emanating from her whole body as she pushes her head against his chest. It feels strangely calming actually. 

“Can I get you a drink?” Patrick asks. David is petting the cat now, scratching into her shoulder as she leans into his hand. 

“Water. Thanks. And would you mind if I used the restroom?”

“No, go ahead.”

Bonnie has retreated to her enclave in the kitchen by the time David comes out of the bathroom. Patrick hands him a bottle of water and looks around, clasping his suddenly empty hands. David takes a long swig out of the bottle, watching out of the side of his eye as Patrick’s eyes focus on his mouth. 

“So what do you want to do tonight?” David asks. 

“Do you think you would like it if I sucked your cock?” Patrick asks. David has to will himself to swallow his last sip of water. “I’ve been thinking about it since the picnic. That’s a lie. I’ve been thinking about it since I watched you get a lower price for the _Alpha_ study. Or maybe when I saw you dancing out of the back— Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it for awhile now.”

“I would like that,” David says, gliding his hands up Patrick’s shoulders. “And after that?”

“You can pick,” Patrick whispers into the curve of David’s ear before he drops to nibble at the skin below it. David’s not going to pick anything too wild tonight, probably, but those words tangle up in his brain as he imagines all the things he might pick, all the things they can pick together if David can manage not to mess this up.

Patrick’s fingers ease under the hem of David’s t-shirt, his blunt nails scraping lightly against his back as Patrick laves his way down David’s neck. David never knows what to expect with Patrick. Never knows if he’ll be sweet or savory, soft or sharp. He’s unsettled and unmoored and he’s starting to love that feeling, being adrift with Patrick’s breath pushing his sail.

Patrick may say he doesn’t know what to do, but his hands are sure. He takes off David’s clothes like they are layers of wrapping, revealing something he has wanted and never known he can have. David has to stop himself from giving him everything right here and now.

As the last layer comes off, Patrick rests his hands on both sides of David’s chest, the line from his surgery slicing vertically between them. His hair is starting to hide most of it and the lights are turned down low, but Patrick can see enough of it to understand the scope. 

“David…” he starts.

“No. I said don’t be careful with me.” 

Patrick kisses him in response, hard and with teeth, hands hold his head where he wants it, and David feels his own shoulders relax. David finds Patrick’s mouth again, finds his buttons, working them open to reveal Patrick’s chest, dusted with fine red-gold hairs. 

He slides the shirt off Patrick’s shoulders uncovering the tattooed birds on the curve of his clavicle. “I like it,” he says. The birds are abstract Vs, three silhouettes in flight. 

“I like it,” he says again, tracing the lines of the Vs. 

“I don’t want you to be careful with me either, okay?” Patrick says, and David thinks this might be the most vulnerable he’s ever seen him, even though he’s trying to be brave. 

David searches his eyes, surprised by how much of himself Patrick lets David see through them. “I think I should be. Tonight. But I promise I won’t always be if that's really what you want.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, and the broad curves of his shoulders settle into David’s arms. “Yeah okay.”

In the end, care isn’t something either of them have to work at. Somewhere between reaching out with the first tentative touches and dropping over the final, trembling edge, Patrick keeps finding ways to take David apart and put him back together. Over and over he does it and each assembly is stronger and truer and closer to the man he wants to be, like each time he takes him apart he sets more of him free. 

In return, David decides Patrick has spent enough time worrying what his partners want. He learns that Patrick’s hands grab desperately when he likes something, as though he can make it last just a second longer. He learns that Patrick’s back twists and stretches to stay in contact whenever he backs away. He learns that Patrick talks a lot, a babbling stream of _fucks_ , and _yeses_ and _oh god Davids_ that turn to stunned, breathless silence when he comes. And everything he discovers makes him want to keep learning the ways to make Patrick feel good, to show Patrick how goddamn powerful he feels, making Patrick want him like this.

When they’re finally spent, David isn’t really intending to stay the night, but he’s too fucked-out to move. Patrick is still breathing heavy beside him, his chest sticky from where he came between them.

“Hey,” David says finally, his throat a little hoarse and dry. Patrick turns and smiles. David is going to get up to wipe the come off of him. 

He’s going to get up now. 

This time for real. 

At last he finally does, but Patrick hauls him down for a kiss instead. It seems like Patrick will never have his fill but eventually they are both sticky enough that they agree a shower is necessary. 

If David had to guess, he would guess Patrick is the kind of person who usually takes short showers, maybe even turns the water off while he soaps up for the good of the planet or his wallet or both. But he’s not worried about those things now, soaking up David with his mouth like he’s drunk on him. 

When the hot water runs out, they dry off, Patrick scrubbing his head with a towel while David pats the excess moisture from his hair. 

“What?” David asks, catching Patrick’s face in the mirror. 

“I don’t know,” Patrick says, shaking his head. But it's clear in his eyes he does know.

“What?” David asks again, stepping behind him to kiss away the drip of water on his shoulder. David doesn’t take his eyes off his in the mirror, so he sees the way Patrick's eyelids struggle to stay open under the sensation. Eventually they do close, and David continues to leave kisses across his shoulders so he can watch.

The man staring back at him in the mirror doesn’t look like the David he remembers at all. His eyes are bright, his smile irrepressible, his scar a distant memory compared to this vivid present. David wonders if Patrick can see that, how different he looks now. He wonders when it changed.

“Why are you laughing?” David asks as Patrick’s shoulders start shaking too hard for him to suppress. 

His eyes flutter open and a laugh escapes. “There’s a naked man in my bathroom,” Patrick says trying to hold back another one. David snorts against his skin and it makes a sound like he’s blowing raspberries on the ridge of his shoulder—and it’s hopeless now. The laughs are rolling out of them. 

“C’mere,” Patrick says, turning in David’s arms and taking his face so he can put him at an angle that David is learning he can work to his advantage. 

“Ooh, now where are we going?” David fits in between onslaughts.

“I want a naked man in my bed again, too.”

And David can’t argue with the way it feels to be in Patrick’s bed, so he stays there until morning.

**——————————**

When the first grant comes in, Patrick takes David to dinner to celebrate, and takes him home to celebrate, and takes him in to celebrate. 

David secures a few more works, including installations specifically designed for the landscape Patrick found, sprouting up among the wildflowers or nestled under the canopy of trees. Once he secures a few contracts, it’s easier to get others.

And one day, instead of him calling up favors, the artists start calling him. They don’t fit the clear metaphors of nature and change that he envisioned. They aren’t the marquee names his mother pitched to council either. They are messier and more complicated and less accessible. But he calls them back and arranges shipments and installations. He works with Ronnie to develop a framework to support a large bronze breastplate from Linda Stein's _Fluidity of Gender_ collection. He reserves a place for a pair of wood and metal and found-object figures from Tuli Mukwano, who will expand her _We are in Love_ series. And when he tells Patrick about the artists and meaning of their work and shows him photos in bed one night, he’s expecting comments about tin cans and metal fragments and how Patrick might as well harvest Dick Sinson’s mattress and the plastic lawn chair and the ironing board frame from the junk pile in front of the motel and assemble them for free. 

But Patrick just looks at him softly and says, “So we’ll have queer artists here too?” And David nods and Patrick kisses him and kisses him and says, “Thank you, David,” until David is vibrating along every inch of his skin.

Some days the phone calls still take it out of him, and it’s good to have Patrick there, a firm squeeze on his shoulder or a pleasant scratch against the grain of the hair on the back of his head or lips warm on his neck under his ear while he’s on the call. David has developed a Pavlovian response to his phone ringing now, a quick surge of tension that anticipates a long swell of soothing from Patrick’s hands. Sometimes Patrick’s hands stay on him into the afternoon, up against the wall in the break room, or warm on his thighs as he sits on a chair, Patrick kneeling in front of him and making him feel worshipped.

They begin to talk about breaking ground, and when Alexis gets wind of it, she plans an affair complete with shovels and hard hats and ribbons and comically large scissors (which he reminds he are for an opening, not a ground breaking). It feels kind of silly to have a big event. There isn’t much ground to break. There will be some crushed stone paths and a few berms of earth to shape to give each of the sculptures space to breathe. They have to move enough earth around to establish what Patrick keeps calling lookouts and David keeps reminding him are view corridors. There is underbrush to clear in the wooded area and concrete platforms and footings to pour for those sculptures that require them. But mostly they are moving ground more than breaking it. 

And still, the whole town shows up. Seventy people line up outside the makeshift construction fencing until Alexis ushers them in to stand on the cleared piece of land. She did a good job, David thinks, looking around. Alexis incorporated attractive signage and large concept boards for people to fuss over. She even invited some regional press. There are several people he doesn’t know, which is a feat considering it seemed like everyone but Darlene’s cousin stopped by when he came back home after the surgery to finish recovery. 

Moira does the honors, pressing the sole of her Alexander McQueen booties onto the flat of the shovel like Sarah Burton included the steel brogue toe cap in the design of the pointy heels with this exact type of event in mind. 

David has ideas about themes and motifs and how to curate the story at Rosewood, but the real theme that’s emerging is the way everyone who is even tangentially involved in the project has faked sincerity all along until one day they step back, and they realize the sincerity is real.

One person who has always been sincere about Rosewood is Patrick. It’s one of the things David likes most about him. He teases with sincerity. He works with sincerity. He fucks with sincerity. And afterwards, he says things that are so simple, so easy as they float along on his breath, that David knows he’s sincere.

Now, the sight of Patrick in a hard hat, head bent and talking to Ronnie, is almost enough to make up for the fact that David, too, has to wear a hard hat and his hair may never be the same. Because Patrick will card his hands through it later and tug on it just enough to send David to the edge and tell him he loves the way it looks untamed and manhandled, and he will mean it sincerely.

**——————————**

It’s a lazy Sunday morning when he finds the letter. Patrick had woken up earlier and made coffee and done the crossword in the Sunday paper. And then he had come back to bed, burrowing under the covers and up against David’s side, hand pumping softly until David was hard and aching and finally, finally gone. David would have stayed in bed like that all day, warm and sated, but he couldn’t. He promised Stevie a movie and his family their standing Sunday dinner. Patrick grumbles a bit when David leaves but falls back asleep quickly, the birds on his shoulder rippling as he grabs the blankets to bury himself back under them.

David showers and changes and since Patrick still shows no signs of stirring, he opens the drawer of the desk in search of paper and a pen to leave him a note. The letter is vertical, tucked between the stapler and a box of staples, the edges of the envelope shiny from handling. David doesn’t need to open it to know what it is, but he does, his hands shaking so hard he almost can’t pull the thick sketch paper out. 

He sees the words he wrote and rewrote over and over until he got a draft that sounded as sincere as he felt. An apology and a thank you and a promise. For his heart. For his life.

“Hey.” He jumps at Patrick’s voice, still groggy with sleep.

David closes the drawer quickly and turns so his back is to Patrick. 

“I have to go,” David says, voice too high.

“Everything okay?” Patrick asks.

“I— Yes. I have to go. I’m late and um… Dinner.”

“Dinner? It’s not even noon,” Patrick says. “Hey, will you look at me?”

“I know I’m— I told Stevie we would meet five minutes ago.”

“Oh sure, on time for Stevie,” Patrick says, but David clamps his eyes shut to keep the tears in and doesn’t turn around, so the joke falls flat. “David…”

He can hear Patrick getting out of bed and he can’t. He can’t. 

“I’ll call you,” David says. He has to take the letter—he can’t put it back now without Patrick seeing it—so he slides it into his pocket where it lived for so many months until he sent it. 

He runs down the stairs, the rhythmic thump of his feet on each tread pounding against the roaring of his pulse in his ears.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artists/works referenced in this chapter: 
> 
> [Juliana Cerqueira Leite](https://www.julianacerqueiraleite.com/blind-spot-2-2012), Blind Spot 2, 2015
> 
> [Linda Stein](https://www.lindastein.com/series/the-fluidity-of-gender/), Fluidity of Gender Series, 2007 (ongoing) 
> 
> [Tuli Mukwano](http://www.gordonrobichaux.com/leilah.babirye.html), We are in Love Series, 2018


	4. like the sound a heart makes

It takes Patrick approximately five seconds too long to start panicking. By the time he finds enough clothes to follow David, David is on his bike and halfway down the street. 

He tries a text message: 

**_I’m worried. Should I be worried?_ **

There is nothing for two hours, and then a terse reply.

_Can’t talk now._

_Call you tomorrow._

So he’s worried.

He has a little work he could do and the current season of _Pose_ to catch up on since he fell asleep the last time they watched and David has insisted he be caught up by Tuesday for the premiere. He can’t focus on any of it. He could text Alexis, but the last thing he needs is the Roses thinking he did something to David. Did he do something? He would know if he had, right?

He thought last night had been great. Better than great. They hadn’t tried anything new… the opposite really. David had used the last four months of learning Patrick to work him deftly from one end to the other, outside to inside, until he came shockingly hard for someone whose reactions and responses had taught David exactly what to do. Patrick had even thought, before drifting off to sleep, that he was enjoying feeling settled. That he never really had that before, even after all those years of trying. 

He’s not settled anymore. He’s scattering, his brain conjuring a thousand different reasons why David left. Patrick thought he had surrendered to the ebbs and flows of life, but he’s not just giving in this time. 

**_David, please._ **

_Sorry about earlier._

_10:30 tomorrow?_

Patrick stares at the phone. A definite time is a good sign, right? Except he doesn’t think he can wait. 

**_9:00?_ **

Dots appear and disappear, and then finally an answer.

_9:05._

A laugh-sob jitters out of him. Maybe this has nothing to do with him. David has left before when Stevie or one of the Roses needed him. Maybe that’s all this is and David was maybe crying because… he can’t think of anything. Or he can think of too many things, and none of them good.

Fuck, it’s going to be a long day.

**——————————**

One of the things David loves about Stevie is that she has always known how to adapt to him. She can slide chameleon-like into whatever space he’s in, blending in with the wallpaper until he’s ready to talk. 

Which is how they are halfway to the Elmdale Art House before he tells her.

“Pull over,” he says, pointing to a small neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.

“Okay,” she says, and then does. “Are you ready to tell me what’s bothering you?”

David starts trying to put it into words, but he can’t find them. He still can’t believe it’s true. The chances of him getting a heart at all were infinitesimally small, and now this. He might have spent the rest of his life with Patrick blissfully unaware if it weren’t for the letter. The letter!

He takes it out of his pocket and hands it to her.

“Where did you get this?” she asks.

“Patrick,” David says, and he hopes that’s enough of an explanation because he really can’t say anything else. He lets out the breath he’s been holding since he left Patrick’s, long and shaky, and then he’s gasping and choking to inhale as the sobs tumble out of him. He buries his face in his hands, buckled over until his head is resting on the grimy dashboard of her car. She turns off the car radio and rests one of her fine-boned hands on his back.

They sit like that for awhile. He mutters nonsensical things about falling in love and second chances and what is even the fucking point of any of that, and why would the universe even do this, and what the fuck happened, and how is it possible for him to be so damaged—so fucking damaged—even after part of him is fixed. She rubs his back and manages to agree with him without granting truth to anything he’s saying.

He runs out of tears, face raw, throat sore, eyes swollen from oversaturation. 

“Maybe you should tell him,” she whispers. “We can go right now. I’ll come with you. I’ll stay with you and you can tell him.”

“What would I say?” David asks, tears heavy and prickling in his eyes again.

“Just…Patrick, I found out that…” she starts. “Patrick, you should…”

“See! You don’t even know how to start.” David is swiping the tears away now, angry that somehow this is his job now because he found a letter he thought he would never see again. 

“I’m not good at extemporaneous confessions!” She catches herself and huffs out the rest of her frustration. “David, we’ll think of something on the way. It’s twenty minutes back. We’ll think of something.”

“No. I can’t see him today.”

“Okay,” she says. But she turns the car around anyway and drives back towards Schitt’s Creek. “It’s times like this I really wish you could still smoke pot with me.”

“Yeah,” David croaks. “Me too.”

The second string of text messages from Patrick arrives as they park in front of his room at the motel. Patrick has no idea what’s about to happen to them, and David just wants one more interaction with the man he loves. That’s pretty clear now. That he loves him. Just as it’s clear that he’s about to lose him. So he lets him win on the meeting time. Almost. It’s not like David will sleep tonight anyway.

**——————————**

It’s his dad’s turn to cook, which means eating will be an exercise in discreetly picking apart the food to locate roughly edible components. And this is why he shouldn’t be living in an adjoining motel room with his entire family in his thirties, he reminds himself. So he can wallow without being interrupted by a meal that is simultaneously burnt and room temperature, having been cooked earlier in the day in a kitchen in the House of Schitt and served on mismatched plates around an ugly veneer dining set. 

David knows he’s not being fair. His dad’s cooking is no worse than the café’s, and he normally loves the energy that flies around the table when the four of them are together, like they are making up for all the time they lost in their years before moving here. But that doesn’t mean he has to enjoy this today.

He messages Stevie with an SOS and she comes as soon as the last guest is checked in for the night. 

“I’m going over to Stevie’s,” he says, waving from the door.

“Oh, David,” his dad says. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I’m worried you might be getting sick. You didn’t eat much for dinner, and well, that’s, uh, unusual for you, son.”

David should come up with an insult about his cooking couched in fondness, or a falsely enraged, “I don’t like what you’re insinuating,” so his dad knows everything is okay. But he can’t manage it, which makes Alexis suspicious.

“Yeah, David. You didn’t even eat half of the noodles and you like them when they are super gross and chewy like this,” she says.

His mother is too much like him to miss the growing panic in his face. The tears come again like a flash flood swelling up from his chest. 

“Is something amiss with you and sweet Pat?” she asks. 

“He said we’re not doing Pat,” Alexis reminds her with a glare. And then something else dawns on her. “Oh my god, David. Did Patrick ask for an open relationship?”

“Oh, son.” His father is forlorn which is just too fucking much. “I have to admit, I was skeptical—”

“Is he pulling back?” his mother asks.

“What? No. He’s not— Everything is—” He’s about to say _fine_ , but everything is not fine. It might never be _fine_ again. And he’s crying for real now and god if only Patrick was pulling back because his family is acting like they would go after him with clubs and knives if nothing more efficient could be summoned. He loves them so much, the three of them yelling at each other, working each other up into an angry mob on his behalf, and this is a lot for one man to have. Maybe he was silly to think he could have more than this, when he already has so much. 

“Everybody stop!” Stevie hollers into the noise. “David has Patrick’s dead fiancé’s heart.” It’s the first thing she’s said since she arrived. Her hands fly to her mouth as though it spoke without her permission.

“I have to go,” David says, pulling Stevie with him by the sleeve of her flannel. He turns back to his family, still gaping at him. “We can talk tomorrow. Just… Please let me be the one to tell him.”

**——————————**

For the second time since he first kissed David Rose, Patrick gives up on sleeping at five in the morning, showers, gets dressed, puts the package he’s been saving in his bag, and heads to work for the day. 

It’s just a little after seven when he walks around the old general store from his parking spot in the back. He’s surprised to see the lamp at David’s desk is on, and even more surprised to see David sitting there in the yellow glow, staring at the blank space in front of him.

David looks up when he comes in. His eyes are red and swollen, his hair clinging to yesterday’s style, and Patrick thinks he’s beautiful anyway, even though he’s pretty sure now that whatever is wrong has to do with him. Them.

“Am I late or are you early?” Patrick asks.

“Both I think,” David says. He offers a thin smile, lips tight across it

“I got you something,” Patrick says, taking it out of his bag. “I was saving it for our four-month anniversary on Friday but… I couldn’t wait.”

David takes it from him and releases the folded paper one taped seam at a time. Patrick wonders if he’s trying to delay whatever he thinks is coming. 

“It’s a sketchbook,” David says, voice so still and quiet.

“Uh, yeah. I know you have one, but you use most of the one you have for Rosewood. But that’s… it’s yours, but it belongs to all these other people too. I wanted you to have one that was just for you.” 

David stands and comes around the desk and wraps him so tightly into a hug that Patrick has to wiggle his arms a little looser just enough to breathe. And maybe he’s been wrong to toss and turn and expect the worst. Maybe this has nothing to do with him after all.

“Hmm, he likes it.” Patrick tries to lighten the moment, but David keeps squeezing like he’s afraid of the dark that’s closing fast around them. “Are you okay? I’ve been worried about you.”

“I should have found you yesterday,” he says, letting go finally and leaning back against his desk. “I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me what? David, you’re—”

“My surgery… I had a heart transplant. June 22, almost a year and a half ago.”

Patrick’s backwards stagger feels like someone else, like he’s floating above and watching this play out, like the mere mention of June 22 has called up all the ghosts of his old life, including his own. 

“They didn’t give me her name,” David says. “I didn’t know her name. But I asked if I could have the address to send a thank you, and one day about six months ago, I mailed a letter, through an agency, to a family in Cedar Ridge.”

“David—” It sounds like a warning and maybe it is, as if asking David not to finish will make what he’s about to say any less true. And even if it could, David doesn't seem like he can stop.

“I found this in your desk,” David says, pulling the envelope out of his pocket and passing it to Patrick. His fingers manage to grasp it despite feeling numb and tingly. “I was trying to leave you a note and I found it.”

Patrick knows it’s his turn to talk, but he can’t make anything come out. He keeps looking at the place where David’s scar is and his brain can’t process it.

“You don’t owe me anything here. The grants are mostly done. I can find someone to help with the rest. You can... I can give you space. I can do the rest of this on my own if you need that. I’m sure you won’t want to be reminded of… I’m so sorry.” He trails off and then his voice starts to shake. Which probably means Patrick should hold him or soothe him or something, but he’s holding this letter instead and that feels like too much to be holding as it is.

The tears fall out of David’s eyes in fat drops tracking down his cheeks and Patrick should do something about that too but he can’t. And then David is shaking his head and shaking his shoulders and he’s shaking all over. 

He dabs his tears with the sleeve of his sweater which Patrick thinks is probably incorrect but he’s holding the letter so he can’t get him a tissue or something. 

“But if you want to try,” David says. “I don’t know why you would. But if you want to try… I used to be the kind of person that didn’t like to connect with people. That’s different now. I like knowing what love is now. I think maybe she showed me that. But I—”

“I have to go.” Patrick thinks he’s the one talking but it doesn’t sound like his voice. “I’m sorry… I just. David, I held her heart hostage for twelve years. I can’t do that anymore.”

The words hang between them, both of them trying to hold on to bravery, the path they thought they were on disappearing between them.

“Patrick, it’s not her heart anymore,” David says, and Patrick loves him so much for fighting, hates that he’s fighting for something Patrick can’t give him. “It’s mine. And I choose who I give it to.”

“I have to go.” Patrick says it like the apology it is. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” 

**——————————**

Patrick has never just thrown some things in a bag, gotten in his car, and left. Technically he doesn't this time either. He makes arrangements for Ray to take care of Bonnie and waters the succulents by his bedroom window and waits for a load to finish in the dryer and makes sure to hold his mail and put the living room lamp on a light timer. But it’s been four hours between finding out about Rachel’s heart and pulling out of the parking lot next to his building, so that’s a pretty quick turnaround. _It’s mine_ , David had said. But Patrick doesn’t know if he can ever learn to see it that way. 

Not that he hadn't thought about staying. He had thought about staying the same way he used to think about leaving when he was with Rachel. He thought about it over and over and over until his brain learned to dismiss that thought outright. It was a pattern now, an established pathway, from something feeling vaguely not-right with Rachel, to worrying over fixing it, to thinking maybe it wasn’t fixable, to thinking leaving would fix it, to convincing himself leaving would fix nothing. And now he's convinced staying will only make it worse.

Now it feels like he wished this into existence. Like he made this happen, an accumulation of all the times he wished he could have the things he loved about Rachel but…right somehow. It’s not fair to either of them to think that way now. They are similar in a lot of ways, but the way David responds to Patrick is different. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever it is, it’s a fucking tragedy, and a big fucking mess. 

So now he’s in his sedan with no idea where to go and a fuel light blinking at him. At the gas station outside Elmdale, he leans against the sun-warmed car and closes his eyes while the tank fills. He barely slept the night before, and there isn’t much between here and anywhere that he can reach before nightfall. And this is probably why normal people who actually have their shit together don’t leave town the second the impulse occurs to them.

Which is how he ends up at Adam’s. Adam has an air mattress that he tucks into the corner of an alcove he uses as an office. Patrick gives him an abbreviated version of the last few days with enough of an edge to convince Adam to give him some space. When Adam comes in later to tell Patrick he’s going to sleep, he offers to let him stay as long as he needs to. Which is how Patrick stays for three more nights. 

On his last night there, Adam hands him a beer and sits next to him to watch a basketball game. At halftime, Adam mutes the TV and turns, dialing up Patrick's defenses. 

“Listen I wasn’t gonna say anything but…I don’t know if I’m gonna see you again and I’d rather piss you off than risk not telling you what I’m about to tell you.”

Patrick shifts so he can see him more easily, hackles raised.

“Sometimes when you and Rachel were broken up and looking like you would get back together, a bunch of us wondered what it was that kept you trying. You just…you seemed like friends who maybe should have just stayed friends. Like you know how when we lived together you used to just take out the garbage and clean the bathroom and buy toilet paper when we ran out because it was easier than getting into it with me and Chris? And when you got engaged I worried maybe that’s what you were doing. Just…that it was the next thing that needed to be done. Easier than getting into it.”

“Jesus,” Patrick says. He can feel the temper flare deep in his gut, fueled by a spurt of shame.

“But then I saw you two at the wedding and…it was so clear, Pat. It was so clear how much you loved her.”

“I did,” Patrick says. “Not the way I wanted to. But I did.”

“I know.” Adam turns the beer bottle in his hand, studying the label like it holds the rest of his script. “Do you remember Lucia?”

“Obviously,” Patrick says, rolling his eyes. “I don’t remember how long you dated her but however long it was, that was the same amount of time I had to put up with hair clogging the shower drain.”

“Yes, well…not the point. Anyway we dated for two more years after college. And I… I feel weird sometimes, about taking those years from her. She has two kids and a husband who is a fucking slice. She’s so happy now, and when I look at her I can see it's different. But it's also... a little bit familiar. We were happy too.”

“I can’t... Rachel’s not here to absolve me with her future happiness,” Patrick says.

Patrick can wallow all he wants. It clearly doesn’t deter Adam, who crosses his legs and cups his hands over his knee like he’s just getting warmed up. ”Were you happy with her?”

Patrick considers that. It’s a question he’s never dared to answer. “Not all the time. But who is really? I guess I figured we were lucky to be happy a lot of the time.”

“Yeah. I felt that way too. Like what if I blow this up and I never find something better?”

”Yeah,” Patrick says. He tries to open up to Adam’s questions. Finding his way through his guilt is the only way he will ever sooth the burn of hindsight. 

“You know, if she had lived, you might have ended up here anyway. Meeting someone like David—nice work there by the way, speaking of slice—and hoping she would understand, maybe even feeling guilty about the years you spent with her. Doesn't mean you wasted them.”

“I don’t think this is exactly the same,” Patrick says ruefully with another pull on his beer. “But I see what you’re trying to do here. So thanks.”

Adam looks at him. It’s long and intrusive and Patrick squirms a little in response. Whatever he sees makes him turn the sound back on the game. 

“Keep in touch, okay? I’m kind of a worrier, and I’ll appreciate knowing you’re safe at least.”

“Yeah,” Patrick promises. 

Later, Patrick tries to fall asleep and ends up staring instead at the messages with David on his phone. The last message is from two days earlier.

_At least let me know you’re safe?_

**_I’m safe_**. 

He sends the response before he can overthink it. It takes some tossing and turning between the air mattress and Adam’s story, but he finally falls asleep.

The next morning, Patrick decides to drive home. He’s not about to move back for good, but he should tell his parents about…well there’s nothing to tell about David anymore, but he can tell them he’s gay at least. He wants them to know.

His mom reacts to his arrival like he’s the prodigal son, making his favorite lasagna and setting up the guest room with bedding that has a thread count that would even impress David. And for a minute or two he’s not going to tell them he’s gay, just in case he would lose them too. But he’s lost everything else about his life that he planned to take with him into the next chapter. This one thing, this truth about who he is, can come with him wherever he goes. 

“Are you seeing anyone?” his mom asks after he tells her he's gay. He shakes his head and then he’s crying and when she takes him in her arms, it feels like the first time since Rachel died that she knows the kind of grief he’s holding.

He gives himself three weeks to wallow at his parents’ house, but they keep him too busy to make a lot of progress on a plan. Maybe this time he’ll just get in the car and drive until he finds…whatever it is he needs to find. It nearly worked last time. Patrick rolled into Schitt’s Creek and he almost, almost got to make a life there. Maybe next time it will stick. Either way, he has to go back to Schitt’s Creek by the end of the week to collect Bonnie and his stuff. It’s not fair to either her or Ray to leave them together for longer than that. 

“You know, Deanna and Frank said they finally cleaned out a bunch of Rachel’s things and they have a small box for you. I was going to pick it up, but I’m sure they’d love to see you,” his mom says on the last day over waffles, like she’s merely mentioning they are out of milk if he’s so inclined to be helpful.

“Oh. I don’t think they really want to see me.”

“Well I told them you’re in town so I guess it’s up to you,” she says. “Either you leave them wondering why you won’t stop by, or go on and get it over with.”

“Jesus, mom.”

“And stop by the store and pick up some eggs on the way home,” she says, patting his arm as she takes her plate to the sink.

So he calls up Deanna and Frank and arranges to stop by the next afternoon on his way out of town. 

He tells them too, about everything. Even David. Deanna squeezes his shoulder and tells him she loves him and asks for a minute alone, so Frank nods toward the patio and Patrick follows him.

“I know this must be overwhelming,” Frank says, rocking back on one of the lounge chairs. “And I know it’s going to take awhile to sort itself out. But I remember when we agreed to the organ donation…I’m not a praying man, Patrick, but I prayed hard that day. To the universe or a god or whoever might listen, that the person who ended up with her heart was someone deserving of it.”

“He is,” Patrick says, looking at his hands.

“I can see that. First from the letter, and now, when I look at you and see what he is to you.”

Patrick nods slowly and swipes at a tear. 

“You know, you can argue with yourself all day about what you should have done with Rachel. And it strikes me that whatever side you come down on you end up losing. You loved her in every way you knew how. Maybe you know a better way now. But that’s not her fault or yours, Patrick.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Patrick says.

“Do you miss him?” Frank asks, eyes gray and hooded. 

“I miss Rachel,” Patrick says. “I ache for David.” 

Patrick wishes he could be smoother here—it's not Frank's job to give relationship advice to his former-future-son-in-law—but his kind smile says he understands.

“Then I think you know what to do, son.”

Patrick spends the afternoon with them, helping Frank clean the gutters and watching the hockey game with Deanna.

When he gets back to his parents’ house, Patrick opens the box Frank gave him. It’s mostly nothing. A few of the notes he wrote her in high school. A t-shirt that he thinks probably belonged to one of the guys she dated when they were off-again. And some photos, including a framed photo from their senior prom. He’d told her loved her for the first time that night. He’d meant it too, in a way. _Maybe you know a better way now,_ Frank had said. Patrick thinks that’s right. Hopes that’s right. Patrick nearly left her a dozen times, but he never knew how. And now he sees that for the first time in his life, he shouldn’t have left. So he packs up his bag and decides it’s time to go home.

**——————————**

Patrick has been gone for twenty-six days. David doesn’t know where he is, other than _safe_. He’s just…gone. He’s also everywhere. He is in the collated stack of papers that he left on the table in the general store. He is all over Rosewood when David stops by for progress updates and dons the hardhat he suspects Ronnie makes him wear merely for her own enjoyment. Patrick is in the car when David passes their favorite restaurants in Elmdale and sitting in their favorite booth in the café. Sometimes he just appears out of the blue, too, prompted by nothing. 

He’s here now, sitting in the general store that they are about to vacate since the planning and acquisitions phase of Rosewood is nearly complete. David will have to figure out what comes next for real now. He can hear Patrick’s voice, the way he’d smiled around a bite of sandwich one sunny day over lunch and had said, “I really admire you for doing so much for your family, but there’s nothing wrong with making yourself happy too.” 

David also remembers another day, rainy and gray, when they’d talked about what a great space this was, how the light was soft and warm even through the angry clouds, how it would have made a good general store under the right management.

Patrick is there on the pages when he opens the sketchbook he gave him. David drew his hands from memory that morning. But now he has a different plan, so he starts to draw the room around him without the old metal retail shelving and secondhand office equipment.

A few hours later, David stops at Ray’s to talk to him about the plan he’s been working on. He’d called him thinking that some time in the next week or two they could sit and talk. But Ray had insisted he come today. So now he’s standing in Ray’s living room photography studio watching as Ray issues enthusiastic direction to an older woman who is posed proudly in a rubber dress, which is all David needs of that story.

“Excuse me, we had an appointment?” David says. 

“Ah yes,” Ray nods. He takes the ticket poking out of a red take-a-number dispenser and hands it to David. “Patrick will be right with you.”

There is no time for that to settle before Patrick comes around the corner with another of Ray’s clients.

“Nope, you’re all set, Mr. Gordon. You should get a reply in another week or—” Patrick stops cold when he sees David. The end of Patrick’s sentence is nowhere in sight, so Mr. Gordon mutters his thanks and sees himself out. 

“You’re— You’re here,” David stutters. “You came back.”

David has been trying to get used to the idea that the only way to see Patrick again is to conjure him in his sketchbook. He has to fight not to touch him, just to make sure he’s real.

“I got in last night. I was…” Patrick trails off and swallows hard. His face does one of its slow slides from hopeful to shy to nervous to resolved. “I didn’t know if I could call you.”

“You could. You can,” David says. Patrick looks like he needs to say thirty things at once.

“Ray I’m going to take your two-o’clock,” Patrick says, taking the number from David and putting it in his pocket as though in the midst of everything he needs to be official. David tries not to let the hope banging at his ribcage drown out his brain. “Can we go for a walk?”

“Okay,” David says, and Patrick’s smile slides again into fondness. 

Neither of them have to pick a direction to wind up at Rosewood. The landscaping is mostly done. The grand opening is less than a month away. A few of the plantings will have to grow in and several of the sculptures will be installed over the coming year as they are completed, but they can see the shape of it now. They cross into the wooded area, a lush, mossy green retreat.

“This is the Mullholland, right? It’s just like you described it,” Patrick marvels when they reach a turn in the path. The sculpture appears out of nowhere, and disappears just as quickly, a blocky form with shimmery mirrored surfaces. It’s oriented at an angle so that it reflects the woods back at them, disorienting and intriguing. Patrick walks up to it and places a hand on the stainless steel. It’s the first thing most people do when they see it; it looks like you should be able to cross the mercurial plane and keep walking in another dimension. It’s still a surprise to David to find it is solid.

“I went to my parents’,” Patrick says at last. “I thought maybe I would keep going, try Toronto or something. But I couldn’t try somewhere else without trying again here.” Patrick sees David behind him, eyes blinking back at him in the reflection. “I’m sorry I left. I should have called. I should have come back sooner. I should have—” 

“I’m glad you came back,” David says. If he’s learned anything from his new heart, it’s that the greatest gifts come on their own schedule.

Patrick turns so he’s looking at David for real, instead of in the mirror. “I'm sorry I left. But… David, I never felt right, the whole time I was gone. Like a part of me stayed here,” he says. “With you.”

Patrick hesitates, like he’s not sure if that’s enough. For now, it’s more than enough.

David takes his face between his hands and murmurs, “I kept it safe for you.” 

His eyes are dark in the shadows of the trees, but David sees them dart to his own lips, invitation mingled with desire. David pauses long enough until the desire draws Patrick closer, and he kisses him soft and slow like the first time. The second time is less soft as Patrick leans back against the steel surface and draws David in, lips slightly opened. Maybe this sculpture is a dimensional rift after all, because as he kisses him again, David feels like he could live here forever with only the press of Patrick’s lips and the warm pull of his fingers holding him in place, the clearest sign he’s ever had of where he belongs. 

Patrick’s pauses for a breath, quick puffs of air on David’s cheek.

“Your heart is pounding,” he says before another kiss, this one short and through a smile.

“I think that’s yours,” David says. He catches a tear with his thumb and kisses another one off Patrick’s cheek.

“Can I?” Patrick asks, his hands hesitating over David’s heart. David nods, and Patrick closes his eyes and drops his ear to David’s chest, his hands wrapping around his back to hold him close. David holds Patrick’s head in return, fingers combing through his short hairs.

He stays there for a long time, breathing with the rise and fall of David’s chest, listening to his heart.

**——————————**

“What were you meeting with Ray about anyway?” Patrick asks once they’ve collected themselves enough for David to give him a tour of the parts of the park that have been finished since he left. 

It's so close to finished that he can get a sense of the way the spaces flow together, patterns established and interrupted. Patrick wonders if this is what David’s galleries were like, each subsequent detail establishing an expectation until around a corner you found something entirely unexpected. It would make sense. That’s how David seems to carry himself, too. 

“Oh. Um, I had an idea. For a general store.”

“You want to open a general store?”

“Well it’s a general store, but also a very specific store.”

“I see. This is sounding kind of familiar.”

“Familiar?”

“Yes. ‘It’s a sculpture park, but it’s also more than a sculpture park. But it’s also less than a sculpture park.’ I still don’t know what that means, by the way.”

“It’s a—”

“An environment. A cultural immersive experience, I know. Whatever that means… You really did something incredible here, David.”

“Thanks,” David says. His mouth does one of Patrick’s favorite things, trying to visit every corner of his face in an effort to hold back from saying or feeling too much. And maybe Patrick should tell him now, how much he loves him. 

“Will you tell me about it? The general store?” he asks instead.

David’s eyes light up in a way Patrick never saw at the start of Rosewood and then he talks and talks, like he can’t keep himself from telling Patrick everything. He goes into detail on the consignment system he’s working out, on sourcing local products and how he’s already identified a few potential vendors. He talks about merchandising and featured products and online sales to boost traffic. He describes gallery nights in conjunction with visiting exhibitions at Rosewood. He gestures wildly as he explains, like he’s painting the picture of it in front of him, and suddenly Patrick can see it. He is maybe the most brilliant person Patrick has ever met, and he’s starting to realize he’s only seen a tenth of what David Rose is capable of.

“Anyway Ray was going to help me put a business plan together so I could start applying for loans for the startup money,” David finishes. 

“I have money,” Patrick says. He has savings and some of the life insurance and—well he would have to talk to her parents before he uses that but even without it… “There are grants we could apply for. And I could help you with the business plan. You should make one anyway.”

“You think we can get grants for something like this?” David asks.

“Oh definitely,” Patrick says, David’s energy infecting him too. “Compared to funding pretentious public art installations, it will be easy to get the money to support local businesses.”

David grins at that, and then he’s kissing him, lips soft and sure like there will be an infinite number of chances to do this, and then harder and seeking, because they both know that’s not always true.

“There’s something else I want to show you,” David says, pulling him to the right down a fork in the path. 

The platform is positioned in a shallow dip in the ground like a stage. There are curling and swooping wood railings mounted around it, both on the platform and punched into the earth, maybe a dozen in all. 

“What is this?” Patrick asks.

“I saw an exhibition by this artist once in Paris. Alex Cecchetti. He made these dance rooms that were meant to be engaged with. Danced with. Anyway I called him and told him about Rachel and asked if he would make something like that for this place. I didn’t know at the time, about the heart. Just that… just that she was important to you. Anyway he put together some components from his exhibitions and I may have called in a few other favors but... “

“So this is like a dance space?”

“Well it’s a sculpture but yes. I also called her old dance company to see if they might perform here for the opening.”

“David…” Patrick starts.

“We don’t have to do the performance. It was just a thought.”

Patrick nods and looks again at the sculpture nestled in the earth. It’s probably five or six meters square at the central platform. The space is a little weird empty, but he can imagine it the way David described, filled with people. She would have loved that, he thinks. Seeing how it only makes sense through movement. Like how she loved to watch birds fill an open sky with their formations. This is a place that feels incomplete without bodies in motion. 

“We have to do the performance,” Patrick says. He turns to David and thinks about saying it, _I love you_. But this is not the place for that. So he blinks back the tears and settles for, “Thank you,” which is not the same but true nonetheless.

“Do you miss her?” David asks, brave and open.

“She was my best friend,” he says carefully. “Some days I still take my phone out of my pocket to call her and tell her about something.”

David nods and turns. From the small hill they can see a lot of the park. He scans it like he’s looking for something. 

"This place turned out okay," David muses.

Patrick laughs next to him. "It did. It's more than a sculpture park for sure."

David flashes him a brilliant smile and takes his hand, pulling him toward the main gate. 

They stop by the general store, nearly empty now, to pick up David’s bag. 

“I should get home,” Patrick says. “Bonnie has been alone all day, and she’s already mad at me for leaving.”

“Bonnie!” David says, startling Patrick. “No wonder I like her. I knew there had to be an explanation. I have never once met a cat I liked.”

“Why? Because she was Rachel’s? Is that why you think you like me?”

“No,” David says. “Being with you is the most like me I’ve ever felt.”

“Oh,” Patrick says, moving closer as David turns out the lights. 

“Also, I don’t just like you,” David says, palming one of Patrick’s cheeks as he rests their foreheads together. “I love you.”

David kisses him before he can say it back, and he keeps kissing him. It feels like he kisses him all the way home. But finally, interrupted enough by the process of unlocking the door and greeting a seriously annoyed feline, he gets his chance.

“David, I love you too. But none of this explains why you like the cat.”

**——————————**

The Rosewood grand opening has turned the Roses and half the town into caricatures of themselves, bigger, louder, full of emphasis on all of their less well-managed qualities. Roland preens about his early support of the park in his speech, which he delivers in David’s presence approximately forty too many times in the name of rehearsal. Ray requests daily meetings to discuss photography for the event, for which the strategy is apparently everchanging. David’s mother and sister bicker about every detail from food to temporary staging options. His father is busy making sure the motel is prepared for the influx of out-of-town guests. Stevie and Patrick have become insufferable now that their text exchange has taken on a life of its own. Which is to say he loves them both more than he can possibly express.

But once it’s underway, once the the speeches begin and the dancers perform and the Jazzagals sing, everything and everyone turns back into themselves.

When the event is over and the park officially open, David walks his bike alongside Patrick on the way back to his apartment. 

“I’m exhausted,” Patrick says.

“Me too.”

“And just think, in another month we’ll have a grand opening for the store.”

“Oh, no, we’re not doing a grand opening for the store,” David says.

“But then how will people know we’re open?” Patrick asks.

“Well I was thinking what if we did like a soft launch?” David asks. “You know, just test the store out on a small group of people. Did like an exclusive VIP guest list, and offered a friends and family discount?”

“Mmm,” Patrick says, unlocking the door to his apartment. “As your business partner, I think we should talk more about this some other time because we’re home. And this is a no-work zone. At least for tonight.”

“Okay,” David says. “But when we do have that discussion, I look forward to being right.”

David knows Patrick can’t possibly leave that alone, and he doesn’t, and they go on like that, David working Patrick up as he nudges him down on the bed and Patrick working David up as he presses him down into the mattress with each insistent thrust. 

After, Patrick cleans them up and David pulls him back down into a long kiss before settling in with his head on Patrick’s chest where he sleeps most nights, listening to the slow, easy beating of his heart.

**——————————**

Over the next year, Rosewood settles into Schitt’s Creek. It’s out of place always, adorned with shiny foreign objects and full of stories that never quite impress the people picnicking on the grass or strolling the gravel paths the way they are intended to. But it’s appreciated and, more importantly, loved. David can watch from the front window of Rose Apothecary—on the rare occasion they aren’t too busy—as people gravitate toward Rosewood from the store, from the café, from Bob’s, from the bank, from all over town with all kinds of purposes he envisioned, and even more gratifyingly, some he didn’t. So maybe everyone has some sense of why Rosewood is special after all.

He and Patrick don’t visit the park as much as they used to. Things have been busy lately with the store and wedding planning and Stevie’s competition with his mother for Jocelyn’s town council seat. But it’s the right kind of place to spend a day like today. Not an anniversary or a birthday or a wedding. Not a soft launch or a rollout or a grand opening. Just a normal day, the past and the future stretching out in opposite directions to expose the peace of this blissful present, lying in the park with the man he loves.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artists/works referenced in this chapter: 
> 
> [Rob Mulholland](http://robmulholland.org/public-art-projects/2018-2/), Natural Creation, 2018
> 
> [Alex Cecchetti](http://www.alexcecchetti.com/#/dance-room/), Dance Room, 2015, 2016, 2017
> 
> Huge thanks to my beta [Pants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smarty_Pants/pseuds/Pants) for late-night read throughs, brainstorming, and always being honest about what is working and what needs work, to my emotional arc support chicken [Likerealpeopledo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo) for so much brainstorming and enthusiastic cheerleading, and to several others on Discord who listened to me whine and read early drafts and troubleshooted with me and just generally make this the best hobby.


End file.
